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CONSUMER ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING
Friday, November 14, 2008
8:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, S.W., Room TW-C305,
Washington, DC
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Ms. Berlyn: Good morning, everyone. Thank you
all for braving the fog and the rain and the traffic
in Washington. For those out-of-towners here, we
apologize for the Washington weather.
Welcome. Thank you all for coming this morning.
This is a great turnout for our meeting.
And as hopefully all of you know, this is the
final meeting of this Consumer Advisory Committee.
We were chartered in 2007 for a two year period. And
that goes until the end of this year. So that makes
this our final meeting.
So we will be doing some things related to that,
talking about what we’ve done. And I’m also going to
give you an assignment as well. So we won’t let time
pass without us all, in some way, staying connected
to the issue that we’ve been working, the DTV
transition.
First of all I wanted to thank Dodie, who is
where? Thank you for the food today, for your
breakfast and lunch. We appreciate that very much
and cablevision.
[Applause.]
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Ms. Berlyn: Let’s see, is Scott Doron here?
And you are serving in place of Jim Clinton this
morning. So, welcome.
Let’s see, Jamie? Where are you? Jaime is
serving in Bill Belts place for Consumer Electronics
Association. So, welcome to you.
And let’s see, Lisa. Lisa you are here today
for Janice Schacter.
Ms. Hamilton: Correct.
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you and welcome. Are there
any other folks? Oh, Doug Wiley is here for Jack
Sanders for NAB.
Any other folks who are alternates who are at
the table? Well, welcome to you all. We’re going to
go around.
Why don’t we do that right now as a matter of
fact? And just have everybody introduce yourself.
We do have some new faces. So, Brenda, do you want
to start?
Ms. Pennington: Absolutely. Good morning. I’m
Brenda Pennington representing the National
Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates.
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Mr. Kimmelman: Gene Kimmelman with Consumers
Union. And I apologize for having been absent. I’ve
been on leave of absence for the last six months.
But I was here at the beginning. And you’ve done all
the great work. And I’m pleased to be back at the
end.
Ms. Morris: Hi, my name is Sara Morris. And
I’m with the National Telecommunications and
Information Administration with the Department of
Commerce.
Mr. Stevens: My name is Brandon Stevens for the
Eastern band of Cherokee Indians. I also Chair the
Broadband Committee, the Working Group.
Mr. Doron: I’m Scott Doron. I’m Director of
the Southern Technology Council which is part of
Southern Growth Policies Board.
Mr. Benton: I’m Charles Benton, Chairman of the
Benton Foundation.
Mr. Isett: I’m Dan Isett, the Public Policy
Director at the Parents’ Television Council.
Ms. Tschirch: Dodie Tschirch, Cable Vision
Systems Corporation.
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Ms. Kalani: Lori Kalani representing Dish
Network.
Mr. Wiley: Doug Wiley, NAB.
Ms. Bobeck: Ann Bobeck, NAB.
Ms. Hamilton: Lisa Hamlin, Hearing Loss
Association of America.
Ms. Peltz Strauss: Karen Strauss, CSD
Communications Service for the Deaf.
Mr. Stout [through sign language interpreter]:
And I’m Claude Stout. And I am with the Deaf and
Hard of Hearing Consumer Advocacy Network.
Ms. Heppner [off mic]: -- for Deaf and Hard of
Hearing persons.
Mr. Ellis: Rich Ellis from Verizon.
Mr. Hedlund: Jamie Hedlund, Consumer
Electronics Association.
Mr. Schlauer: Paul Schlauer, representing
Consumer Federation of America.
Mr. Craig: Lew Craig, Alaska Department of Law.
Mr. Cole: John Cole, Hawaii Public Utilities
Commission.
Ms. Tristani: Gloria Tristani, Alliance for
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Community Media. Also I will be the proxy for
Nixyvette Santini, who is a Commissioner on the
Puerto Rico Commission.
If all of you saw an email in Spanish, we
weren’t meaning to keep any secrets from you. It was
basically Nixy saying I can’t go, will you please be
my proxy.
Mr. Bridges: Good morning. Eric Bridges, the
American Council of the Blind.
Mr. Marshall: Hi, It’s Scott Marshall with the
Commission.
And don’t worry Gloria, it put the test to my
freshman year college Spanish. And I definitely
flunked the test.
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you all. We’re running a
little late on our schedule. So we will move
quickly.
I’m going to turn this over for just a minute to
Scott Marshall to give us our daily logistics. Thank
you, Scott.
Mr. Marshall: Good morning everybody. Thanks
for coming, especially for our alternates. Just
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wanted to let you know we will have lunch available
for all Committee members at 11:45.
Restrooms are right out the doors that you came
in, down the short corridor toward the front of the
building and make an immediate left. And that’s
where you’ll find those important facilities.
And if you need anything my Assistant, Betty
Lewis, if she’s in the room, Betty, could you
identify yourself? She’ll be here from time to time
or if you need anything else that doesn’t require any
work, I’ll be happy to help. Thanks a lot.
Ms. Berlyn: Thanks, Scott.
A couple things on your agenda you will see. I
just wanted to mention this time that we are using
right now is usually the time when we have remarks by
Commissioners. And we hope to have Commissioner
Adelstein down here at some point during the day.
But one of the things that is happening in the
100 days to go for the DTV transition is that the
Commissioners are on the road most of the time
working on the DTV transition, working in the local
communities. So that’s why we have a quiet presence
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today from the Commissioners. But we do have Rick
Chessen from Commissioner Copps’s office, who has
offered to just come and make a few remarks on his
behalf.
So, why don’t you sit at the end, Rick? There’s
some empty space there. Thank you, Rick.
Mr. Chessen: Hello. I’m Rick Chessen, Senior
Advisor to Commissioner Copps. And just take a
couple of minutes because I know that you’ve got a
busy agenda today.
As Debra said, Commissioner Copps has not yet
returned from Florida. He was spreading the gospel
about DTV down in the Tampa/St. Pete area and getting
a lot of good coverage down there from a lot of help
from broadcasters and others who have made a real
effort down there. And I think if he were here he
would thank you, first of all for all the help that
the CAC has given on DTV, especially on the Consumer
Education order which is far, far better for the
input that this group provided.
And he would also, I think, say that, you know,
we need your help now more than ever. We’re 95 days
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out according to my countdown clock in my office when
I came in this morning. And we have a lot of work
ahead of us.
I think you all know that Commissioner Copps
would have preferred a more activist approach to this
transition. But we are where we are. And now we
have to take the time we have left and make the most
of it.
I think overall there’s three basic things that
need to happen for this transition to work.
Number one is we have -- consumers need to be
aware.
Number two, they need to understand what is
going on and how it affects them personally.
And number three, they need to take effective
action.
The first piece, the awareness, is in pretty
good shape. Thanks again to a lot of the efforts
from broadcasters and cable and others. We’re in the
90th percentile or even probably a little bit north
of that at this point. So people know something is
coming.
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But then it drops way off when you start talking
about, ok, now what do I do? How does this affect me
in my household and taking effective action? And as
Commissioner Copps said in his letter I think to
Chairman Martin back in September, this gets local,
and affects house by house very, very quickly.
Everybody, basically, is unique in making this
transition to digital. Everybody has a different set
up of television sets. Everyone has different
capabilities themselves, technical savvy, physical
capabilities.
Everyone has -- is in a different terrain.
Everyone has a different set of broadcast stations.
Everyone has different antennas and different set
ups.
And it gets very, very specific, very quickly.
As we found out when we go on the road, it’s all
very, you know, micro questions. I have this set up,
what do I do? Do I need to do anything? So that
first level of understanding is something that we
really, really need to focus on.
The possibly even bigger challenge out there is
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the final one which is effective action which
includes the coupon program and people understanding
that they need to order them. One of the big lessons
coming out of Wilmington, you’ll probably hear later
is to get people to do something now. Because a lot
of people will have difficulties even if they get the
coupons, even if they redeem them and bring that
converter box home. They’re going to have trouble.
A lot of them aren’t going to get the pictures
that they’re used to. And they may not know why.
And they may not know how to troubleshoot.
And after Wilmington, some of the calls
averaged, people who were having trouble with their
converter boxes, averaged 40 minutes on the phone
with the FCC. And we received a couple thousand
phone calls after Wilmington. So if you take that
out of, I think there are about 14,000 over the air
households in Wilmington, couple thousand calls. You
sort of project that out nationwide and you’re
talking about potentially millions of calls.
And obviously we can’t handle that at the FCC on
a particular day. So we need help. We need to
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figure out how to get questions answered.
We need to figure out, it may be decentralized
call center capability. But we need to ramp up
significantly our ability to take calls for the
transition and especially peaking, I’m sure, after
transition. I know some local communities are using
211 as a portal for people. I think that’s an
interesting, you know, possibility or other trusted
ways that people know of getting information. And
how do we coordinate that and make that all happen in
95 days.
And then once they find these places and call
for information, how do you get them the information
they need? A lot of people won’t be able to, even
over the phone, you know, follow instructions or be
able to hook something up. A lot of seniors probably
have huge console sets, you know that may not have
been moved in 35 years.
And we may need actual people to come out and
assist them. And how do we coordinate that process
of coming into the portal and then getting out to
somebody who is actually going to be able to
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physically come to their homes. And again I know a
lot of senior groups and others are concerned about
possible exploitation. They need help. But we’ve
got to make sure that whoever comes to their home is
there to help and doesn’t take advantage of them.
So it’s a huge challenge. And we don’t have
that much time. But those last two steps, the making
people understand what they need to do in particular.
And then helping them to take effective action is
going to be huge and doing it now.
I think the more problems that we can take care
of in advance, as we found out in Wilmington, the
better off we’ll be. So somehow getting people to
not only get these converter boxes, I think one of
the big confusions is that people think that whatever
the date is that’s when they’re supposed to plug it
in and sort of getting out that message that it’s
here now.
The DTV transition is not coming on February
17th. The transition is here today. And if you hook
in your converter box and find out what problems you
have today, you’ll get more help. And also if people
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wait, the coupons may not arrive in time. All those
sorts of things that waiting, you know, is not a good
idea.
And also the call centers, evening out that
phone traffic around the transition will be also
helpful. So I think that’s where Commissioner
Copps’s priorities now. And we look forward to
seeing what comes out of this Committee as always.
And look forward to working with you.
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you so much, Rick.
We have on our agenda today a working session
for lunch for our DTV Working Group. Scott and I
realize that most of the CAC members are on the DTV
Working Group. But for those of you who aren’t who
would like to also participate, we’re going to be
talking about some of these issues at our lunch. And
we have some proposed actions to take on that.
I think we all recognize that the issues you
raised are very important to the success of the DTV
transition for consumers. So thank you. And thank
the Commissioner.
Mr. Chessen: Thank you. Ok.
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Ms. Berlyn: Absolutely.
Ms. Tristani: And this is just something that
came to my mind as you were speaking. Maybe it’s
something you could convey to Commissioner Copps and
I hope can be conveyed to the Chairman is that this
is the last meeting of this Committee. We’re done
today.
And it, in my mind, doesn’t make sense that if
the transition is occurring. And well, you know
there’s a drop dead date in 95 days. And there’s
work to be done that this Committee or some other
Committee doesn’t get reconvened immediately.
And I just thought that it would be something to
convey to the Chairman. That’s my personal opinion.
Mr. Chessen: Ok. Thank you all.
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you, Gloria. Thank you,
Rick. Thank the Commissioner as well for all he has
done on this issue.
Very good. Next on our agenda, we are so
pleased to have NTIA once again represented at our
meeting. The coupon program is such a critical part
of the success of the DTV transition.
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And Sara Morris is with the Office of
Congressional Affairs at NTIA. She’s going to
provide us with an update of what’s happening with
the coupon program. And we will have time for
questions as well.
So thank you very much, Sara, for joining us.
Ms. Morris: Thank you, Debbie. And I’d like to
thank the Commission for this invitation to
participate. The work of this group is critical to
our national mission to transition to digital
television.
Ms. Berlyn: Sara? Could I suggest that you
move to that end?
Ms. Morris: Sure.
Ms. Berlyn: Because the people who are to your
left may have a hard time seeing you. So, thank you.
Ms. Morris: I’d be happy to do that.
Hi again. I just wanted to reiterate how much
NTIA appreciates the opportunity to be here today to
provide an update on the progress of the coupon
program and to answer any questions and discuss any
issues I know are of great importance to many of you
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as we transition.
I’m going to start out with kind of an overview
of the numbers, where we stand, how many coupons.
Move into a brief discussion of our consumer
education. And then go into some of the policy
issues that we’ve been addressing. And where those
stand and how we feel things are going. So, if you
have any questions please feel free to ask.
Right now we are at a point 95 days before the
transition occurs. We have distributed 34 and a half
million coupons to American households. That’s to
18.4 million American households. And about nine and
a half million of those are identifying themselves as
exclusively over the air.
14 million coupons have been redeemed toward the
purchase of a converter box. So that’s about -- it’s
about a 50 percent redemption rate. We are looking
at redemption rates in terms of how many coupons --
for coupons that have gone through an entire 90 day
life cycle. How many of those, what percentage of
those have been redeemed, when you look at that
figure, that is about 51 percent right now.
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The amount for over the air households, the
redemption amount, is actually slightly higher than
that. It’s about 56.1 percent. So we are very
pleased, not only with the consumer numbers who are
getting their coupons so far. But especially in
those who have taken action to redeem the coupons.
We are getting requests right now, as of
November 12th, about, the year to date average, daily
request rate is about 109,000 per day. We had a
major spike just this past Monday when we noted the
100 days out event. We had an event with
broadcasters, consumer electronics, Chairman Martin,
Commerce Secretary Gutierrez attended. And we saw
results.
People take notice of dates like that which is
good. And we had a spike of, we usually have around
now about 126,000 coupons requested per day. We got
229,000 coupons requested that day. So we are very
pleased that people are listening when they’re told.
And they’re responding to our messages.
The consumer message that NTIA has been
utilizing has been refocused since Wilmington to do
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exactly what Rick was just talking about. When you
-- we saw down in Wilmington that there were problems
when people connected their converter box. They had
some technical troubleshooting that they had to do.
I think in the vast majority of cases when it
came to the box itself, it was a question of
scanning. It was a question of re-scanning, perhaps.
And so it’s hugely important that people, not only
get their coupons right away. But that they connect
-- they purchase their box and that they connect the
box as soon as possible so that they will have plenty
of time before February 17th to make sure that
they’ve adjusted, you know, their own apparatus the
way they need to.
We’re very pleased, in fact with the response of
consumer electronics manufacturers and retailers to
the program as well. You’ve all, you know, were
concerned, as we were in the early parts of the
program. You know, are we going to have enough
converter boxes? Are we going to have enough
retailers available?
You can’t go anywhere these days without finding
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a converter box. And if you do find yourself in a
store that doesn’t have a converter box for some
temporary period of time, there are now 50 online and
telephone retailers who are available to take orders
for coupons. So I actually, I’m in Congressional
Affairs. I hear a lot. And I speak to a lot of
individuals who, you know, they’ve got their coupon.
They want to act.
And maybe they have gone down to their local,
you know, major retailer twice and they’ve been out.
And I direct them to go -- don’t just go back to the
same place. Go to another store. Look online. Call
one of the telephone retailers, many of whom are
really, are charging, not, you know, very reasonable
amounts for shipping, some even for free.
So we’re very pleased. We have 185 certified
converter boxes as of today. I think the estimate
when I was -- when we first making estimates was
maybe we’d have around 10. So, but for this program,
I think, there would be no market for affordable
converter boxes. We’re very, very pleased with that.
Today there are approximately 2,311 participating
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retailers with 34,700 outlets in all 50 states and
virtually every territory as well.
So, back to consumer education, we are -- our
message right now is apply, buy and try and do it by
the end of the year. Make sure that you take action
as a consumer to decide whether or not you need a
converter box, whether that is the right path for you
and the necessary path for you. And then if it is,
apply for your coupon. Give yourself six weeks to
receive it, buy a converter box and set it up.
And for those who have technical questions, we
have been providing the FCC’s excellent materials on
troubleshooting. We have been guiding through our
website and through other’s materials that can help
folks with regard to their antennas and again,
scanning for channels, etc. So we are focusing on
that message, especially in the months of November,
December and January.
In January, we face a time when at some point,
probably I’d say late January, early February. We
could get to a point where the consumer will not have
enough time once they get their -- you know, if they
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order a coupon February 1st. It’s possible it will
not arrive by February 17th.
And so beginning in January, we are going to be
shifting our consumer education message somewhat to
focus on your options. Know your options. If you
can’t get a coupon and a converter box in time for
February 17th, here is what you can do.
And we are, you know, hoping, and our plan at
this point is to try to drive consumer demand as far
forward, as far accelerated, as much as possible. So
that as many coupons as possible are ordered by the
end of January. And thus to try to avoid a, you
know, a massive surge at the end of the program.
We’ve had a number of issues come up in the
coupon program since its inception. One of the first
ones that, you know, had just not been -- we realized
we really needed to make a change in our rules was on
the eligibility of nursing home residents. We have
implemented a rule change recently. It’s fully
operational now.
So that if you live in, if you are a resident of
a nursing home, intermediate care facility or senior
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living facility, that is licensed by the state, you
are eligible for a coupon. We have a special mail in
form. It’s a special application. And it’s
available on the web.
And we have been distributing it at senior
centers. And we’ve actually gotten about 2,500
applications so far for nursing home residents. So
we’re very pleased that we’ve been able to amend our
rules and expand the program to include that critical
population.
That same rulemaking also amended our rule to
permit residents who use a post office box for their
residential mail delivery to be eligible for coupons
to be delivered to that address. Previously they had
to qualify under certain categories of a rural and
Native American villages and Alaskan villages. We
basically said if you use a PO Box that’s fine.
So long as you have not already received two
coupons to your residential, physical address. So
we’re pleased to be able to make the program more
consumer friendly in that sense. And again, that is
fully operational now and applications for PO Boxes
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can come in through all channels of our program.
We are working on implementing and approving a
number of grants that we were given flexibility to
offer by Act of Congress and by the good works of
many in this room to provide technical assistance and
consumer education to special, vulnerable groups.
And we are very close to doing that. We are in the
final throws of administrative and bureaucratic
issues that I’m hoping will be resolved within the
next day.
But we do hope to award approximately four and a
half million dollars in technical assistance in
consumer education grants very shortly. And again we
appreciate the work that Debbie and many others in
this group -- in this room, did to have Congress give
us that flexibility to have that additional funding
for that purpose.
Hawaii is transition on January 15th and looking
forward to answering any questions on that. We have
-- we are working with the Hawaii broadcasters and
also with Senator Inouye’s staff very closely to get
the word out that January 15th is their day to
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transition. We are going to be having a -- we have
NTIA staff on the ground in November conducting ten
town hall meetings.
We have prepared specialized, collateral
materials. We’re going to be adjusting our website
so that we have a spot there. But we are focused on
making sure that that transition is going to be as
smooth as we hope the national transition will be.
And look forward to further lessons learned from that
experience.
And I think that’s about it. You know we
released a plan. I don’t know if the GAO asked NTIA
to provide a plan for how it’s going to manage
consumer demand toward -- in the final phase of the
program. We have released that plan. And I think
it’s going to be up on our website later today.
We -- the gist of the plan is basically what I
just said. We are going to be pushing and doing our
best to push consumer demand as far forward as we can
in the months proceeding February 17th so that we can
make sure that as many households are prepared,
especially over the air households. And maybe that
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went without saying. And I should say it.
Our consumer message is focused heavily,
heavily, heavily on over the air households. Those
households being those disproportionately, minority,
lower income, Native American, rural, non-English
speaking, disabled. We are focused laser like on
those communities.
And we have targeted 45 communities, 45 DMAs who
either have low coupon participation rates, lower
than we’d like and/or have disproportionate numbers
of those demographics in the DMA. So one of the
reasons why Tony Wilhelm is not here is he is out
doing that work right now. And we have had Secretary
Gutierrez also has been very active in reaching out,
especially to the Latino community and lower income
communities to get them the necessary information and
help that they need.
So with that I’m happy to take any questions.
And again, appreciate this group’s audience.
Ms. Berlyn: Sara, thank you very much. I want
to tell the group that if you haven’t been here
before you need to pick a card up. And also when I
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call on you to make your -- to have a question or
make a remark if you could raise your hand so that
the folks in the booth in the back can turn your mic
on. That would be very helpful.
So I saw two cards go up simultaneously, three.
Charles and Gene and Gloria. Oh, yes, Gloria.
Mr. Benton: Well, I think it’s amazing what
you’ve done with the funding that you have. And
congratulations for your good efforts and I know that
Tony has really been very dedicated to --
Ms. Morris: Thank you.
Mr. Benton: -- doing the best he possibly can.
I think you had about five million dollars as I
recall for the education campaign originally.
Ms. Morris: Correct.
Mr. Benton: Would you explain what additional
funding that you have received. Was it from
Congress? Was it from the FCC through Congress? But
what additional money have you received? And what
additional activity have you been able to do with the
additional funding?
Ms. Morris: That’s an excellent question. And
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yes, in the legislation that originally established
the coupon program, the Congress set aside up to 160
million dollars for the administration of the
program. Five million of which could be used for
consumer education about the coupon program.
In legislation that passed this summer that
amount was increased by as much as, potentially ten
million. But what’s turned out to be about four and
a half million through our being given flexibility to
tap certain programs that were established under the
same legislation that created the coupon program,
i.e. those that are being funded by the proceeds of
the 700 megahertz auction. That program is one that
permits low power broadcasters and translator
stations to obtain a converter for their own
facilities so that they can continue to send out an
analog signal.
Those are 1,000 dollar grants. There is a
finite number of stations that were actually eligible
for that. And so it was clear that we were not going
to need all of that money.
And about a month ago we released a notice of
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availability of funds which indicated that we see at
least four and a half million dollars would be
available through that fund. And Congress, in giving
us that flexibility, directed us to please focus on
groups who are most needy including to give them
technical assistance. And so that’s what we have
been doing.
We’ve received several grant applications.
We’ve actually done it on an expedited basis that is
slightly different from the standard grant procedure.
But it gives us the ability to act more quickly. And
again, we’re looking forward to releasing those
grants very soon.
Ms. Berlyn: Thanks, Sara. Gene?
Mr. Kimmelman: Sara, I just -- a series of
questions just to re-familiarize me with what’s left.
You’ve given out 34 and a half million coupons. How
many are left?
Ms. Morris: Well, we’ve given out 34 and a half
million coupons. 50 percent of those have been
redeemed.
Mr. Kimmelman: Right.
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Ms. Morris: And many are still active. So it’s
an excellent question because I think there’s been
some confusion and kind of assumptions that well, we
only have 33 and a half million coupons to give out.
That was some of the -- we were hearing that early
on. No.
We actually estimate that we will and can
distribute up to 50 and a half million coupons with
the administrative funds that we have. And based
upon the redemption rates that we’ve seen so far, we
believe that we will in fact, you know, distribute,
you know, closer to 25 -- or have redeemed 25 million
coupons.
Mr. Kimmelman: Ok. Can I ask a different way
just so I can understand those numbers?
Ms. Morris: Sure.
Mr. Kimmelman: How many have been distributed
and expired?
Ms. Morris: I can tell you exactly. We’ve had
ten million, 10.8 million coupons have expired.
Mr. Kimmelman: So.
Ms. Morris: Those are ones that have not been
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redeemed.
Mr. Kimmelman: Right. So that’s what
effectively boosting your total number because you --
Ms. Morris: Correct.
Mr. Kimmelman: Ok, just so --
Ms. Morris: And the way it works as you know is
any coupon that is not redeemed, the funding
associated with that coupon goes back into the pot to
be recycled for new coupons. And so --
Mr. Kimmelman: Ok. Are you currently accepting
applications from people who received them and their
coupons expired?
Ms. Morris: You mean to re-apply?
Mr. Kimmelman: Yes, for reapplication.
Ms. Morris: We -- you’re talking about re-
issuance to a household that’s already received two
coupons and they’ve allowed it to expire? No, we
agonized over this, frankly. And concluded that we
did not have clear, legal authority to distribute
more than two coupons to any household regardless of
whether they allow them to expire. We’ve also had
situations where they’ve been lost in the mail or
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perhaps they’re stolen.
And what we have advised consumers to do in
those cases is that, you know, the rules that we
adopted do not prohibit you from giving away your
coupon to a family member, friend, neighbor. And so
we’ve encouraged people to help their friends and
family members if they find that they do need to get
additional coupons because their coupons have
expired.
Mr. Kimmelman: Ok. Of course you know some of
us challenge that legal interpretation. That will
come back later.
You talk about a plan going forward which makes
total sense. But obviously there will be many people
who will wake up to this beyond a date at which your
current distribution system with, what did you say,
60 days expectation? Slow mail service.
Ms. Morris: Six weeks.
Mr. Kimmelman: Ok. Six weeks. They will not
be able to receive coupons in time. Do you have a --
I assume it’s non-public, contingency plan for when
we get past January, the first or second week or
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third week or an emergency plan as to a back up way
of getting coupons quickly to people. A back up way
of getting converter boxes to people?
Ms. Morris: Well, in terms of coupons which is
what NTIA is doing. We are in charge of the coupons.
And we are limited by statute in several ways
including that we have to mail these by postal
service delivery. And the post office -- we are
using standard class mail right now.
It takes about, you know, anywhere between three
and 14 days for standard class mail to be delivered.
You know, something that has been discussed is
whether to move to first class mail. Now that has
funding implications, big funding implications. And
you know it comes down to a question of whether the
benefit of that outweighs the, you know, the impact
on, you know, whether we’d be able to use that for
other coupons.
To your question of whether we would have an
emergency. You know, we -- it’s why we’re
encouraging and urging the people to apply as early
as possible. And also why we would be shifting to
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you have to be prepared if you’re not going to order
your coupon in time to get a converter box by
February 17th, you may need to take other measures
including cable or purchase a set.
Mr. Kimmelman: I just want -- I’ll wrap up. I
know we need to get to Gloria. I just want to ask a
final question related to ten million dollars of
which you said you effectively indicated you’d only
need four and a half million.
We just heard before about the overwhelming need
for call centers and how that will grow as we get
closer. Has there been any discussion of whether are
those monies just gone now? Are they being used for
other purposes within the Commerce Department? Are
they available for any other contingency or emergency
endeavors as we get closer to this?
And in concluding I know there’s a
differentiation between the education money and other
administration money. But first class mail might not
be cost effective at one date, but it might become
extremely cost effective at another date.
Ms. Morris: We are tapping every cent that we
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possibly can for either consumer education or
distribution of coupons. We asked one of the other
Congressional actions that occurred this year at our
request was that Congress gave us flexibility to
spend additionally 20 million dollars more in
administrative funds generally so that we did not get
to a point where 33 and a half million coupons had
not been redeemed. But we were running out of money
to actually send them out the door. So we are
balancing the administrative funds we have to focus
both on consumer education and coupon distribution.
Call centers. Our call center started out in
the beginning of this program as really the only
number that most people were calling. And frankly it
did get overwhelmed, not only by people who were
buying -- who wanted coupons. But by people who were
just looking for the most basic information about
digital television.
It became problematic for many reasons. Which
is why we are so pleased and commend the Commission
for really stepping up to the plate with its own DTV
phone number to take calls as an initial basis and
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then send them down to the coupon program so that our
system can be used more sufficiently. You know,
whether we would use any of the additional funds that
we’ve been given for call centers?
I think we would agree with something Rick said
earlier if I got it right that it becomes a very
local issue at some point. And we’re hoping that,
you know, we’ve done so much with five million. And
now with, you know, the few more million we’ve gotten
that local community groups, universities, Elon
University in Wilmington was a great example. These
groups will step in and step up to help to educate
and take calls when their community is in need of
that assistance.
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you. Gloria?
Ms. Tristani: Yes, thank you. And I have a
series of questions too, but Gene already asked some
of them so this shouldn’t take too long.
Ms. Morris: He’s good.
Ms. Tristani: But I do want to follow up on
one. Of the 10.8 million expired coupons, 10.8
million households that have expired coupons.
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Ms. Morris: It’s actually 10.8 million coupons.
Ms. Tristani: Coupons, ok. You know how many
households then of those?
Ms. Morris: You know virtually everyone is
ordering two because they can.
Ms. Tristani: Ok.
Ms. Morris: And so I would -- I don’t have that
figure handy. I know that 18.4 million households
have applied for coupons.
Ms. Tristani: I want to focus on the expired
coupons.
Ms. Morris: Right. Ok.
Ms. Tristani: Do you know of those 10.8 million
coupons how many come from households that are over
the air only?
Ms. Morris: I do not have a figure handy. But
just to give you the kind of broad, break down of how
the coupons are being ordered. About 50 percent of
coupons are being ordered by over the air households.
Over the air households are slightly higher in
their redemption rates. And almost every household
is ordering two coupons. So if I had to look at that
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and you know, use that math. I would think it would
be around -- I don’t know, three million households?
Someone can correct my math.
Ms. Tristani: Right, right.
Ms. Morris: That have had their coupons expire.
Ms. Tristani: And that cannot reapply for
coupons.
Ms. Morris: Right. You know --
Ms. Tristani: Per your interpretation.
Ms. Morris: Correct.
Ms. Tristani: And let me ask you of those do
you have any way of knowing how many come from lower
income, minority neighborhoods, even Puerto Rico
which has 70 percent of households over the air only.
Ms. Morris: Oh, and Puerto Rico is been
awesome. Puerto Rican households ordered at a higher
rate than any other state in any other location.
Ms. Tristani: Well because they’re over the
air.
Ms. Morris: They are.
Ms. Tristani: But the question is how many have
expired --
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Ms. Morris: I don’t have a figure for Puerto
Rico.
Ms. Tristani: Is there any way to get that
information?
Ms. Morris: I’m certainly happy to follow up on
that.
Ms. Tristani: Ok.
Ms. Morris: We’ve worked very closely with the
Puerto Rican Representatives.
Ms. Tristani: But this isn’t just a Puerto Rico
issue. Nixy isn’t here. And I think she might be
asking.
But there is a fundamental concern that they’re
going to be at your count, three million households
right now, and I suspect it may be more. That’s only
based on expired coupons, but households that may not
end up ordering, other of households that will be
left in the dark. Are there any plans to revisit the
interpretation that --
Ms. Morris: No.
Ms. Tristani: -- You cannot reapply for a
coupon.
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Ms. Morris: No. No.
Ms. Tristani: Ok.
Ms. Morris: It would require, as we have
stated, it would require Congressional action. So
there very well be --
Ms. Tristani: I know. We have different
interpretations of that, but. That’s all I have.
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you, Gloria. Can I ask a
quick numbers question?
Ms. Morris: Sure.
Ms. Berlyn: The way that the coupon program was
set up at some point you were to go to making coupons
available to only analog households. You haven’t
gotten to that point.
Ms. Morris: Only over the air.
Ms. Berlyn: When do you anticipate that will
kick in? And are you doing that sort of messaging to
push people who want coupons who aren’t analog only
households?
Ms. Tristani: Over the air.
Ms. Berlyn: Over the air only. What did I say?
Yeah, OTA households.
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Ms. Morris: Yeah, that’s a great question. We
made a decision in August. When we got to a point
where we were going to be distributing our 22 1/4
millionth coupon, which is how many coupons are
basically covered by funding in the base level of
funding, that we would distribute coupons out of both
the base and contingent funds simultaneously for the
very reason that we did not want to have to change,
obscure, confuse the messaging.
We are going right now at a pace where we
believe that both funding tranches will be available
for the entirety of the program. So we do not
anticipate getting to a point where we would have to
cut off coupons to non over the air households and
just move to over the air households.
Ms. Berlyn: Ok. Thank you, Sara. Brenda?
Ms. Pennington: Yes, thank you, Sara for your
report on the coupon program. I was particularly
pleased to hear about the government is focused on
specialized communities. Is there a set time that
the coupon program will expire or is it contingent
upon the money that’s available?
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Ms. Morris: Another good question. We are
required -- the statute ends our program, requires us
to stop taking requests for coupons on March 31st,
2009. The coupon program itself pretty much comes to
a halt about six months after that in September.
Ms. Pennington: Ok. And also you mentioned
that beginning in January there’s going to be a push
for consumers to know their options. And you gave
the example that from February 1st, that if they
ordered but they haven’t received them, so therefore
we’re assuming that it’s their intention to get the
converter box instead of, you know, going to
satellite or cable subscription.
What would their options be?
Ms. Morris: Well.
Ms. Pennington: And how will the government get
that message out to consumers?
Ms. Morris: I mean, one option that in fact
we’re seeing numbers of consumers doing is just to
buy a converter box without a coupon. Again, you
know, when this program started there were no 50
dollar converter boxes or at least maybe there were a
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handful, if that. And we have certified 180 of them
now. I think there are probably 100 or so that are
actually in the market available. And they range in
price from 40 dollars.
Ms. Pennington: Right.
Ms. Morris: -- To going up to 70 dollars. But
I think most of them are available in a range of
probably 45 to 69 dollars. So many consumers, we’re
hearing from retailers, many consumers are opting to
purchase the box without a coupon in certain cases.
You know if you have an expired coupon you could
still make the transition without having to get a
subscription to a pay television service or buy a
full fledged, digital television.
Ms. Pennington: That’s correct. But for some
people that might not be an option. But do you have
any numbers on how many consumers are buying them
without the coupon?
Ms. Morris: I actually don’t. I would love to
see that. And perhaps the CEA --
Ms. Pennington: Details.
Ms. Morris: -- Has any or the manufacturers.
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I don’t have that information.
Ms. Pennington: Ok. Thank you.
Ms. Berlyn: I put my card up here early on
because I wanted to ask you a question that sort of
follows up on Brenda’s point. And I think at some
point there was an expectation that a number of
consumers would go out and purchase new television
sets. That that -- they wanted the high def. They
want the digital programming.
With this economy, I was wondering if NTIA and
the FCC actually have both considered the fact that
we’re now raising an expectation for large purchases
that consumers may now change their mind about making
right now. And so the coupons may be all the more
important. And you may see a surge in requests.
And I was just wondering if that’s been a part
of the planning and thinking over the course of the
next few months.
Ms. Morris: Absolutely. I mean the economics,
the changed economics are an important factor. And
you know we are focused on getting out as many
coupons and addressing the demand, responding to
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consumer demand as much as possible.
And so, but I think you’re right. I think it’s
very possible that people who would otherwise have
thought to get the digital television either at
Christmastime or in January may be putting that
decision off. You know, we don’t know.
One of the things that has been the biggest
challenge for all of us and especially this coupon
program has been that we have no idea what really,
what people are going to do. We’re looking at data
that is, you know, to see what people have done up to
now. But we do have some new economic realities.
And it’s possible that we could see increased coupon
demand as a result of the economic strain.
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you. I think there’s one
more. Oh, two more questions, Doug and then Cheryl.
Mr. Wiley: Thank you, less a question than
comment. I just want to thank --
Ms. Berlyn: Doug, put your hand up again. Ok,
I think they got you.
Mr. Wiley: Less a question than a comment, but
I just want to thank Sara and Meredith and the whole
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NTIA team for being so responsive and flexible and
easy to work with. You all have been great.
Ms. Morris: Thank you.
Mr. Wiley: And it’s really taken the whole
agency over there working on this to make this
successful. A lot of people don’t realize NTIA is
the principle executive branch agency charged with
advising the President on telecommunication policy
matters, not an agency designed to do this kind of
work. And they’ve really pulled it together and done
a great job.
And just as an example of that their
responsiveness in Hawaii early transition on January
15th, which we all found out about relatively
recently, we asked them to try to expedite the coupon
process and the mailings out to Hawaii fairly
recently. And they have now responded by agreeing to
send all of those coupons first class to Hawaii
starting -- is it immediately or is it January 1?
Ms. Morris: It’s going to be probably in the
next couple of weeks. Yeah.
Mr. Wiley: Which is great.
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Ms. Morris: Well, in Hawaii -- Hawaii. Thank
you, Doug. I appreciate that. And it is. This --
we’re a little policy shop. You know you hear people
say we’re little, but now we’re coupon people.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Morris: It’s been a wonderful experience
frankly. And I’ve only been at NTIA for the last
seven months. I was in the private sector prior to
that.
And it’s been enormously gratifying and
enriching to work with the people, not only at NTIA,
at the FCC and also in the industry because this is
something that, you know, this is hard. This has
been a long, hard thing. Lots of -- all kinds of
plans to make and assumptions and hard work and we’re
just, so many people are putting so much into this.
And, you know, I remember I actually used to
work on behalf of some consumer electronic industry
interests. And would frequently hear well this
digital television transition is just going to be,
you know, a boon to that industry. I don’t know that
this is, you know, necessarily the case.
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These are hard economic times. They’re not
making a lot of money on these boxes. And retailers
have stepped up, everybody has really stepped up.
I think it’s an enormous tribute to this country
that we have taken on this challenge. And that we
are doing as well as we are. And that we’re now
focused on what happens the day after is crucial.
And I think we’re going to respond in the same
way that we’ve been doing it so far. And just do our
best to make sure that people are taken care of.
But, thank you.
Ms. Berlyn: One final question from Cheryl.
Ms. Heppner: Really more of a comment first. I
want to express my appreciation for the change in
rule that allows delivery to a post office box. I
spoke with a consumer who wrote back who had tried to
apply for coupons and found that he could not get
them for that reason.
And if given back the option sometime you think
people with hearing loss tend to use post office
boxes more than your average person because anyone
who has experienced hearing loss will know of the
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terrible routine that we were waiting for a delivery,
when you’re home when a delivery comes. If you don’t
have the money to buy an alerting system for your
home or somebody pushes the doorbell and you know it
or you can hear it, you tend to have to stand,
literally stand or sit by the door waiting for that
delivery and to never know when those coupons were
going to come. Because we may feel very vulnerable
that someone will steal packages unless we’re there.
So this has been a much easier way for them to have
delivery.
My question for you if there have been another
consumer experience seem applied for coupons have
received them, but few are not able to get
information that’s needed about which of the
converter boxes had features that she needed for
captioning. She asked me and others for help. But
back at that time we did not have the consumer
reports information. And we did not have the FCC
information we do now.
And the last thing, having a coupons before they
expire, she went out to buy whatever and could not
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find a retailer that had boxes available. I feel
badly for the people who were early birds that tried
to do the right thing and have those coupons expire.
They still really need them. It’s for the over the
air consumer. Is there any possibility that there
might be funding to go back and revisit that?
Ms. Morris: I appreciate that concern. And
it’s -- there definitely were people who, the
resources just weren’t out there looking at the
different features and again this program while we
have a huge variety of boxes, it ramped up. And
there was a ramp up period. And I am, you know,
we’re sorry for the folks who were not able to take
advantage, you know, in the way that they really
wanted to and needed to very early on.
I am afraid that our lawyers and you know, the
Administration has made a decision about re-issuance
that is just not realistically going to be reversed.
And again, I think it would probably be incumbent on
Congress to direct us to do that. Thanks for your
question.
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you, Sara. I appreciate your
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time that you spent with us. As you can see there’s
a tremendous interest in the coupon program and how
that is proceeding and what benefits consumers are
seeing through that program.
So thank you. And express our thanks to
everyone over at NTIA for all the work they’re doing
as well.
Ms. Morris: Thank you.
[Applause.]
Ms. Berlyn: We are going to try and stay close
to our schedule. So we are taking an abbreviated
break. Please just take about five minutes. Don’t
use this as an opportunity to catch up on all your
work business of the day.
Five minute break, come back to the table.
Louis Sigalos is going to talk to us about what we
learned from Wilmington and actually more importantly
where we are going in the last 95 days. Thanks.
[Break.]
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you everyone for getting back
here. If you’re in the room, if you could get
seated. Scott, we’re going to start.
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Mr. Marshall [off mic]: Yeah -- but I’ll be
right back.
Ms. Berlyn: Ok. Very good.
Louis Sigalos has been the man around the
country for this transition starting with the early
shut off test in Wilmington, North Carolina September
8th. And there were many lessons learned from
Wilmington. I think we can hear a little bit about
that Louis.
But of course, more importantly is what lessons
learned have now turned to action in going forward
for these final days before the transition. And what
are the plans that the FCC has to meet some of the
issues that came up in the Wilmington test. So thank
you Louis for joining us.
Mr. Sigalos: You’re welcome. How long do you
want me to talk?
Ms. Berlyn: I think you’re going to have
questions. So you know, if you could give us your
feel in 10, 15 minutes max, ten minutes?
Mr. Sigalos: Absolutely, yeah. I’m at the
point where I’m like an automaton. You just give me
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a time period, say talk, I can just talk for that
time period.
Wilmington. Wilmington almost seems like some
sort of ancient archeological dig to me at this point
because it has been months since that has concluded.
But I’m sure that’s only my own personal feeling
regarding that. I wrote the action plan for
Wilmington and led the team down in that marketplace.
And we did learn a lot.
Some of what we learned reinforced what we
already knew and recommit to. And that is first and
foremost, the FCC’s role in the DTV transition is
specifically and only for over the air consumers who
are at risk. And that is the low income, non-English
speaking, rural, senior, disability community. That
is our universe to work.
And Wilmington, even though we had mixed
messages going into that marketplace with the
February 17th date that had been pounded into
people’s heads and had to reinforce that we have a
different date. You know, that was done over the
air, for the most part. You know, they were able,
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for those people who have cable and satellite you
remove 70, 80, 90 percent of the equation over the
air, alright. And they did an excellent job, the
broadcasters in that market of working together at
coordinating their messages, coordinating their
activities to ensure that that happened.
And just as one anecdotal side bar on that is I
had one quickly scheduled event at a Best Buy in a
very affluent area of Wilmington. Booth right in
front as you come in the front door. And it was sort
of like a litmus test for me because I thought, you
know, what am I doing here now?
It was a Saturday, high traffic day, but the
location of the Best Buy, without a whole lot of
promotion that might have drawn other people in
because it’s an event about DTV. I fielded questions
about qualm tuners and things like that. People knew
more than I did about what was going on. And not one
person did I sign up for a coupon application.
Alright, so what we did in Wilmington was attack
that market since it was a defined geographic area by
counties. And had a geographic plan of attack in
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mind because what we wanted to do there was not show
that the FCC could talk to every consumer in that
market. But show that an engaged community can make
that transition work and work very well.
So we went. We introduced ourselves to
government officials, the grassroots organizations.
We had weekly phone calls with the broadcasters. And
working together with the partners in that community
we had a very, very successful transition.
And the success of the transition was the fact
that all consumers were aware of the specific date.
And that action had to be taken. It was almost, I
mean, 20 people maybe didn’t know about what was
going on in that marketplace.
What we found ultimately is one of our big
lessons learned is that we should have spent more
time in our consumer education talking about things
like how to install that converter box. Be sure to
rescan those channels. Make sure the TV is on
channel three or four, depending on which one you
use, those types of things and antenna.
And we did talk about those things a lot. But,
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you know, my going in I was so concerned that people
knew about the transition and took action that we
really focused on the date. And that and so on noon
on September 8th a lot of people already had their
converter box at their house. But they hadn’t hooked
it up. And then it was like a bunch of hook up
questions right at the transition and the rest.
So we feel it was a very beneficial experience
for us. We worked with all forms of grassroots
organizations. We worked with governments, you know
and close relationship with the Mayor of that town
with the public information officers from the cities
and from the counties.
We worked with social service agencies, went
outside and had sessions that they sponsored. We had
sponsored sessions at publicly subsidized housing.
We worked with churches. We pretty much just were
exploring everything.
And we did find that wherever we had a
partnership and we had somebody working with us it
was especially effective. Nothing is more boring to
a consumer than a government sponsored anything.
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That does not draw a big crowd. So whenever we were
with an existing group that people already had
relationships with it was a much more meaningful
event.
So I just wanted to, you know -- and I can
answer any questions anybody has about Wilmington.
But I sort of wanted to morph quickly into sort of
what we’re taking moving forward based on the
Wilmington experience. And that is one of the best
ways to engage a community and get those grassroots
organizations is to work at a national level with
organizations. But to sort of insert yourself within
those communities and open up a line of communication
and say that we’d like to work with all of you going
forward.
And so what the FCC has done is mobilized, you
know, all available staff and we are looking at the
final three months as a DMA specific outreach event.
There are many national, many national things we can
do and many national messages. But the fact of the
matter is that each and every designated market area
is unique.
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It’s unique through what the issues are for
consumers there. It’s unique to the type of at risk
constituents that live in those DMAs. The
broadcasters, you know, from low power to full power
to translator stations, what’s going on specifically
with the digital signal in those market areas.
So you need to understand each and every market
area. So working with volunteers at the FCC here,
working with all of our field offices throughout the
United States, we are assigning a staff to each and
every DMA. And a DMA is a designated market area.
It’s a broadcast area.
And then using the Nielsen definition of how
those things aggregate up. We have aggregated up
into six Nielsen regions which we have supervisors in
charge of Pacific, West, Central, Southwest, East
Central, Southeast, Northeast. And I hope that was
six. But there are six.
And all of that information I can actually just
send through Scott to all of you, the Who’s who of
the designated market area coordinators along with
the regional people. And I’ll probably, you know,
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they say repeat a message seven times. For those of
you who have organizations in any of these areas, we
would like very much for you to contact either the
regional coordinator or the designated market area
coordinator and say, hey, we would like to work with
you in these marketplaces.
Next week we’re going to be sending out a large
number of folks into these regions. So we’ve started
dramatically going out next week. Next week we want
to begin first with the government officials in those
areas, introduce ourselves, let them know we’re going
to be trying to engage their networks in those
communities and ask for their help.
Already met multiple times with NAB and the
State Association folks in order to let them know
that we are going to be calling all of the general
managers just to say, hey, can we set up weekly
conference calls. I’m not sure if all the general
managers can do it. But we just want to offer that
up as a, you know, something that we did in
Wilmington that worked very well.
Spoke with CEA as well about letting the
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retailers know. Not a great time of year for
retailers to, you know, have something else
distracting them. But we want to let them know
what’s going on.
If they have events if they can, you know, do
ask the FCC at their stores and the rest, that would
be great. And maybe after the holidays, you know, we
can have a -- but we got them going. And they’re
going to be reaching out like I said with grassroots
organizations, community based organizations in each
and every DMA and try to network and put it together
so that we have a shared calendar.
So everybody knows what everybody else is doing
so that we don’t step on each other. And then more
specifically to understand where people are reaching
so we can look at those at risk constituents very
specifically in each market. And try to focus what
we do to try to touch those people specifically.
So that’s sort of a nutshell, I mean, very
condensed version of what’s going on. And I don’t
know if I want to open it up now or you want me to
keep talking, one or the other.
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Ms. Berlyn: Let’s open it up. See if the folks
have questions. And if not, you can keep going.
Mr. Sigalos: Ok.
Ms. Berlyn: But let’s take a break and see if
there’s some questions. Charles?
Charles, a hand up for the mic folks. Thanks.
Mr. Benton: Your energy and dedication on this
is really inspiring. And the Wilmington experiment
or the test case is blessed by having you down there
beating the bushes and trying to build a model. My
one suggestion is that a sense that after today, we
disperse. I mean this is the end of the Committee as
a Committee.
But of course all of us are attached to our own
organizations and continue our lives apart from being
members of the CAC here in Washington. So it might
be, if you could, send to each member of the
Committee the list of the FCC regional heads and the
DMA heads so we have the list. And anyone then on
the Committee who would like to follow up and
volunteer or be helpful through their organization
would know who to contact in terms of the SWAT team
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that you have out there. So just throw out this as
--
Mr. Sigalos: That’s absolute.
Ms. Berlyn: That’s a great idea.
Mr. Sigalos: That’s an absolute. I’m looking
for -- anybody who contacts us saves us from having
to try and contact them and understand the contact
person and the rest. That’s why we’re asking for
people to reach out to us as well.
But gladly share that information. I want this
to be as open and transparent as is possible. Great.
Mr. Wyatt: I just wanted to add, and I was
trying to get Debra’s attention because we talked
about this earlier and I wanted her to make this
announcement. But in light of Charles’ question,
I’ll go ahead and say it Debbie that the charter has
been renewed for another two year term. Our hope and
expectation is that there will be continuity although
there’s no final decision at this point.
We hope there will be continuities. But it has
been renewed for another two year term. And assuming
that you all are able and willing to serve another
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two year term, our hope is that there will be some
continuity. And that hopefully this will be resolved
very quickly as well.
So I wanted to go ahead and announce it in light
of Charles’ question.
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you, Thomas for mentioning
that. And I think that’s great news for the DTV
transition. So we appreciate the effort to do that
and make it timely so that there isn’t a break in our
efforts in terms of the transition. So, thank you.
I thought I saw another card. Claude?
Claude, you have a question?
Mr. Stout [through sign language interpreter]:
Yes, I do. And yes. Hello, Louis. First of all I’d
like to thank you again for the Wilmington workshop
that you hosted for consumers who are deaf and hard
of hearing. Lisa and I were honored to be part of
that program.
Now my question is do you have any plans to
follow up with a number of workshops like that
throughout the country, you know, throughout the next
few months up until February?
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Mr. Sigalos: The answer is yes. But I want to
put the yes within a context so that everybody can
understand sort of how we’re going about the actual
application of resources when we’re talking about a
nationwide initiative. And the fact is everybody
lives in a resource constrained world.
So we have every market that we’re going to be
communicating with and trying to work very much with
all the key stakeholders whether they be industry,
government, community based organizations and the
rest. The next phase for us and the initial travel
phases has to do with the town hall markets as
identified by the Chairman a little while back. And
those have been -- and those were identified as you
know, those with the highest concentration of over
the air consumers. Ok.
So when we look at the resources. First when we
go about committing staff resources we’re going to
commit staff resources to all of those markets
absolutely. And try to sponsor and co-host as many
events as possible.
And within that context you know, gladly work
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again with you all to try to get some effective
events. And hope that since we -- there’s no way
it’s going to happen in 208 DMAs unless we can do
something along the line of training the trainer.
And it’s independently done without us, but with our,
you know assistance from afar. In certain markets we
can absolutely do this and hope that we can leverage
these events so that, you know, they go beyond the
folks that are in attendance.
So I guess it’s a qualified, but absolute yes.
Ms. Berlyn: Brandon?
Mr. Stevens: Yeah, I represent or at least I
represent the Eastern band of Cherokee Indians and
also work to help promote this digital transition
with Indian Country. And while this is all so
exciting for your Wilmington test market, coming from
my home state of North Carolina, it was exciting to
see that. But I have a question too.
With respect to Indian Country there are still a
lot of people coming into this first generation
technology of getting dial tone service and that sort
of thing. So getting over the air broadcasts of
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television is essential especially in the Southwest.
And I know also Valerie Fasthorse in Idaho. I think
Commissioner Adelstein and Commissioner Copps are
also going to visit the Coeurdalene Indian tribe in
the next couple weeks.
What are some other things that we can do or I
can be of assistance to, especially in Indian
Country? Because this is a community that sometimes
gets left behind, not intentionally. But it’s just
facts sometimes that happens. So, are there some
things that I can do to assist there?
We also would suggest that coming up in either
early February the United South and Eastern tribes
has its annual meeting here in Washington, DC which
is over in Crystal City at the Crystal City Gateway
Marriott that we hold every year. And all the tribes
from the Eastern Woodlands will be here for impact
week. Are there some things we can set there or do
some outreach or to National Congress of American
Indians to help push some things along?
Mr. Sigalos: Well we are going to be at the
event in February. The only thing, I mean, and we’re
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glad they talk and you know, talk end games there.
But February is a bit late to, you know. It should
be a different thing we’re talking about in February
than we’re talking about today.
Mr. Stevens: I understand.
Mr. Sigalos: But to answer your question more
specifically rural and Native American tribes, you
know, basically are part of the at risk constituents
we’re specifically speaking about. So first and
foremost and I’m sure this has already been discussed
is, you know, there needs to be a push right now to
get any. For those people who are going to order
converter boxes to get those coupons in the mail,
there needs to be that push.
But when I think of rural in general what I
think of and I would sort of is the equation for me
is not only that they understand the process of
ordering the coupon, getting a converter box. But
it’s a question of getting a signal. That’s a huge,
huge issue in rural America.
And so when I think of what you can do is one,
we have designated market area coordinators. If you
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can, like you said, you’re going to get this
information from us. If they can go and with every
one contact us so we can work together.
If we’re having these conversations with the
broadcasters one of the things we’re going to be
knowing and we’re trying to understand more here was
that we have coverage maps and other things getting
done is what specifically in each area can the
consumer expect. And in some areas you know there is
some gray. But in a lot of areas there’s specific
knowledge. What’s going to be the digital coverage
area?
If you’re outside the digital coverage area you
need to know that, you know. And even if you know
you’re somewhere where there’s some low power station
certain translators aren’t changing so it’s going to
be analog, but others aren’t. It’s digital. We need
to say there’s an analog pass through converter box
you should buy so you don’t have to be frustrated
with the equipment.
So there’s an extra level of learning, you know,
that’s involved in rural America that’s extremely
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important. And it’s not easy for the FCC to
communicate. It’s very difficult to communicate
those kinds of messages.
So any help we can get in reinforcing that. And
for them to understand the questions they need to,
you know, answers to in order to ensure they get a
signal will be extremely appreciated. But we will
gladly, gladly work with you. You know if there’s
any big events going on where we can really impact
large numbers and you know, we’ll try to get our
folks there and the rest.
It’s just again, committing our resources. It
needs to be something that we really feel that we’ve
effectively hit the outerest constituents in a
meaningful way to do. Does that answer your
question?
Mr. Stevens: Yeah. It does. And I think also
I can with, you know, some of the people that I know
and work with, I don’t mind traveling to events or
helping out.
Because also I live in a rural area in the
Southern Appalachian Mountains, not just Indian
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Country, but also in our area, you know television
over the air for years has been a bother because we
got the three networks and we’ve got a fuzzy PBS and
sometimes a non-affiliated channel or two would come
in which is now like a FOX or something like that.
But television in general has been a problem in the
Western North Carolina Mountains, north Georgia and
Eastern Tennessee. So we know that.
But also I look at areas in no -- I visualize my
grandparents who, you know, like I said before in an
earlier meeting, you know their VCR is still flashing
12, 12, 12. You know and that sort of thing, so with
the understanding of the rural mountain and the rural
areas, Indian Country, anything that I can do to
help. I just, I’m asking you to, you know, I’m
asking what I can do for my country instead of asking
what my country can do for me in a sense.
Mr. Sigalos: And Hallelujah for that. I got to
say because it is, like I say, it’s so dependent on
us engaging partners, having those partners getting
out there and doing it because the networks to reach
everybody are in place. They’re just not typical
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communication industry network that we’re looking to
go through. That we need these other, you know, ways
into people’s homes and into educating those folks.
You just reminded me of one other thing I should
have brought up and that is Hawaii I think was
mentioned is transitioning early. We have a team on
the ground there. We actually are stationing people
on some of the major islands, not just, you know, one
place.
And when you talk about mountains and other
forms of coverage and issues, Hawaii is, you know,
it’s got it all. It’s got it all as far as you know.
They’re changing tower site locations, coming down
the mountainside with their digital.
It’s a really tricky thing for the broadcasters
there. And it’s a consumer education campaign. And
we’re working really hard to get that one in order.
But it does, you know, have that whole thing
about mountains and coverage areas, has all of that
working for it. So we have a very Wilmington like
effort specifically there with that early date
because, you know, it’s a sprint on that one from the
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get go. That’s not something we requested. It’s
something that they needed to get done. And we’re
there to help.
And Puerto Rico has been brought up as well.
And we’re looking at Puerto Rico a bit differently as
well. It’s not a DMA. But we’re treating it like a
DMA. And we actually have some native Puerto Ricans
here at the FCC who happen to be working in consumer
outreach, who -- we’re dedicated to that market along
with the field offices because there are you know,
some things we want to make sure that happen in that
marketplace and that’s going to be a tricky one.
Mr. Stevens: Well, I guess my last comment is
that the FCC, Department of Commerce and several
other people wanting to get this word out. And if
armed with the right information I’m willing to go to
our TV stations, our radio stations, our newspapers,
that sort of thing, locally, but also what I’m saying
is if given the information I can help spread that if
necessary. So, please see me. I’m willing to.
Mr. Sigalos: Most necessary.
Ms. Berlyn: I have Lisa and then Charles and
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then Gloria.
Ms. Hamilton: Thank you. It’s nice to see you
again. And we really do, when I went out with Claude
to Wilmington I really do appreciate all the efforts
you did.
I think that was a highly successful event. And
events like that that are targeted at a community and
in this case it was for the deaf and hard of hearing,
I think are really, really important because again,
you reach out to people who feel and trust the
community. But one thing that surprised me when we
were getting ready for that event was the flyers that
were going to go out to promote the event didn’t say
on the bottom that people could request
accessibility. They could request CART or
interpreters, not until we put that on ourselves.
So my question is and the reason I ask is this
many people who are hard of hearing or deaf assume
that if they see a flyer that doesn’t talk about
access, it’s not going to be accessible to them.
They just don’t even think that it’s for them. So
even if you don’t have a target event, but you’re
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having an event in another area that they might come
to because it’s close, they won’t come unless it says
something like you can request CART. You can request
assisted listening devices or a sign language
interpreter.
So my question is in future flyers or when you
reach out to the whole country. You have a mock up,
I’m sure. Do you have that kind of information
included?
Mr. Sigalos: I don’t believe that we actually
did the brochures on that, did we? I think it was
our partners on that.
Ms. Hamilton: It was a partnership on that,
right.
Mr. Sigalos: Yeah, but I mean that we didn’t
actually -- when we do public notices or other things
like that it’s just a standardized part of our
document to include that. But I will say that when
we go out that I’m always encouraging other people.
Hey, can you put out a release? Can you do this?
Can you do that? Can you promote this thing?
Because otherwise it all falls up in through the
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Commission, you know, not everything comes out of the
Commission, so where we have partners and they’re
going to promote things, all the better.
So it’s only like the half answer to your
question because I really can’t commit that, you
know, things that are done not by us but to promote
an event are going to include that kind of
information. And then the second part of it is you
know we start jimmying it up. We’re doing 20, 30
events concurrently throughout the United States, it
becomes a huge resource issue when to deploy our
resources. So it’s a tricky calculation.
Ms. Hamilton: Well, let me follow that up with
an if somebody does make a request, even if it’s not
on your literature that you accommodate anybody who
is coming in.
Mr. Sigalos: We always, I mean, I work with
Helen for years, so it’s my nature just to
automatically have a process to where we look to
accommodate requests.
Ms. Hamilton: Ok. So I wouldn’t just encourage
you --
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Mr. Sigalos: The concept of the FCC, if
somebody wants to request, they request
accommodations, we just do it. You know, unless
there’s something, you know, some burden or some
hurdle that we just can’t get over. We just do it.
Ms. Hamilton: Ok. So I’m just encouraging you
then to the extent that you can to publicize that you
do that because it’s great that you would provide
that, so people just need to know.
Ms. Schacter [via phone]: This is Janice
Schacter on the phone. Can I add something to that?
Ms. Berlyn: Yes.
Ms. Schacter [via phone]: Ok.
Ms. Berlyn: Janice Schacter is on the
telephone. Thank you, Janice.
Ms. Schacter [via phone]: Sorry about that. I
guess I’m a little confused why that can’t be
included because I agree and support Lisa’s comment.
You know the same way the FCC has certain protocols
and certain things that have to be included in every
release. This just has to be part of that.
And that really is not acceptable to say we
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can’t guarantee. You guarantee all the other
information is correct. This has to be. And it
really should not be, you know, we can’t guarantee
this. That’s really not acceptable.
Mr. Sigalos: Well.
Ms. Schacter [via phone]: That’s just not
acceptable. You know, would you say, you know if
something, you know, you ensure that there’s no
racially discriminating information included in any
release. This is part of that. When you don’t
include information that a site is accessible you
basically are telling people not to come.
Mr. Sigalos: Well let me just say that I
absolutely disagree with 100 percent.
Ms. Schacter [via phone]: Well I --
Mr. Sigalos: We have a lot of partners out
there, a lot of people who want to work with us, a
lot of people with very little resource who are
willing to take on outreach roles for us and hit
specific constituencies. And if now we say to them,
you know, you want to do something, you need to do x,
y and z. And so your bottom line on that cost is no
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longer free because you have volunteers and you have
a facility. But now you have to do these other
things. It will have an amazingly chilling effect.
What I’m saying is where the FCC is involved and
we are part of the event, we will absolutely do it.
Ms. Schacter [via phone]: Yes, but that’s
something called the ADA. You’ve now just eliminated
the ADA. And you know what? You can’t do that.
I’m sorry. Yes. That’s the cost of doing
business. It’s a line item in the budget, the same
way they put up the stage, the same way they put up
the microphones, the same way they put up every other
expense at whatever event they’re doing.
It’s a -- having access is a line item in the
budget. And yes, it has to be accessible. That’s
called the American Disabilities Act. And you know
what, I’m sorry but they’ve got to include that in
the budget. You can’t eliminate a portion of the
population.
Mr. Sigalos: I guess I’m confused. I’m not
talking about the FCC’s budget.
Ms. Schacter [via phone]: I understand that.
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I’m talking about if your goal is to reach out to the
community, the community has to be the entire
community. You can’t just eliminate a portion
because that part of the community costs a little bit
of money. That’s the part of the community that
needs the most help.
Mr. Sigalos: Ok.
Ms. Schacter [via phone]: And you have to
include --
Mr. Sigalos: Ok, so are you saying that --
right now there are people that are doing outreach to
DTV, independent of us 100 percent.
Ms. Schacter [via phone]: Right, but they have
to make sure it’s accessible. Just exactly what Lisa
was saying. It has to be accessible to people with
hearing loss. And it --
Mr. Sigalos: And if those people decide that
they can’t afford to do events and it cuts those
events by 70 percent, that’s the answer?
Ms. Schacter [via phone]: Well, I’m sorry. You
know if you think it’s appropriate to cut a portion
of the population. If you were discussing about
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racial rights and you said it cost more to reach
certain people, you would say no. It’s not
acceptable.
It always seems to be ok to discriminate against
people with disabilities. And it’s time we said
enough. No more. Yes, you can. Let’s pick the new
mantra. Yes, you can reach out to these people. You
have to reach out to them. These are the most at
risk people.
Ms. Berlyn: Janice?
Ms. Schacter [via phone]: These are the people.
Ms. Berlyn: Janice, this is Debbie. Let me
just jump in here. And I think everyone around this
table including Louis and Thomas and other folks at
FCC are sensitive to the access question.
And we know that when the FCC is sponsoring
events, that is a priority. Access is a priority.
And is something that they try and resolve and take
care of.
And I think that the question of what happens
when there are non-profit organizations involved in
trying to address DTV transition within a small,
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local community that I think we could believe we’d
all agree that it would be helpful to work with
organizations that address access in the local
communities to try and work together perhaps. And so
your point is well taken. And is something I think
everyone here will attempt to address. But we know
that the FCC has that as a top priority as well.
Ms. Schacter [via phone]: Oh, that I know. I
just didn’t like how well we’re not sure we can do
that. And we need to be more inclusive and be more
vigilant about it. I’m not saying we can guarantee
everything, but we need to take a much tougher and
stronger stance of being inclusive. And it can’t be
so, well I’m not sure if we can do it.
Ms. Berlyn: Right. Thank you, Janice.
Ms. Schacter [via phone]: That’s what I’m
saying.
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you.
Ms. Schacter [via phone]: Thank you.
Ms. Berlyn: Ann, is your point right on this --
to address this issue? Ok.
Ms. Bobeck: May I make a suggestion though to
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pool our resources, particularly if we have folks
that have joint events? This would go hand in hand
with to our weekly GMs meetings or to community
outreach meetings where we have lots of non-profits,
broadcasters involved. To the extent that you all
have organizations that have sign interpreters or
folks that could assist in those meetings that can
volunteer their efforts to make sure that there’s
community outreach?
Those would be certainly welcome. And I’m sure
that we would certainly appreciate those efforts. So
if we could partner both industry and your
organizations for those meetings, we could make sure
that we’re hitting all targeted audiences. And I
think that could be a great partnership.
Ms. Berlyn: Thanks, Ann.
Charles?
Mr. Benton: I am inspired by Brandon’s
volunteering to work more broadly on this. And here
is a specific suggestion, Louis. You have a Native
American staff leader at the FCC.
Mr. Sigalos: Yes.
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Mr. Benton: It would be wonderful to get all
the DMAs that affect Native areas in the country look
at that as a universe. And with Brandon’s help, you
know, get a message out about the transition.
Specifically to the DMAs that are preponderantly
focused on Native American areas.
Further there is an organization called Native
American or Native Public Media. Loris Taylor is the
person that we’ve been, Benton Foundation has been
dealing with her. And she is really -- it’s radio.
But she’s very much interested in the
inventorying media on Indian Territory. So that
reaching out to Loris, who is being funded by the
funding community, could make a wonderful team so
that you’d have your FCC, Native American staff
person, Brandon, Loris Taylor and you’ve got a little
team that focusing on this problem or this challenge
in Native American parts of the country. So it’s
just my suggestion to be very specific.
Mr. Sigalos: Well that’s excellent. And we do
have, you know, Shana Bearhand here at the Commission
who’s working. And she purposely doesn’t get rolled
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into what we’re doing here and get a specific DMA
because she’s working with them.
And people have asked us, well, what about
tribal? I say, well, let’s go to Shana because we
already have contacts.
Mr. Benton: Right.
Mr. Sigalos: And we’re going to go through
those, you know, existing relationships.
Mr. Benton: Right.
Mr. Sigalos: -- As we enter those communities.
Mr. Wyatt: Just let me add on that. Shana and
others here at the FCC are working as a team to
contact every tribal leader in the country.
Mr. Benton: Great.
Mr. Wyatt: And we’ve been doing that for two
months. And Loris, you mentioned Loris. We’ve been
working with Loris as well. She’s been very helpful.
Mr. Benton: Wonderful.
Mr. Wyatt: And we certainly appreciate
Brandon’s offer. And we’ve been in contact with
Brandon. And we’ll get back in touch with him.
We’ve been reaching out very diligently to every
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tribal leader.
Mr. Benton: Wonderful.
Mr. Wyatt: And this is where Brandon’s insights
might be particularly helpful because sometimes
reaching out to the leader doesn’t always get us to
the right people right away. And it takes a little
time to get to the right people. But the response
has been very tremendous in terms of their reaction
and the willingness to distribute information, to
tell us where the at risk people are in their
communities.
So we appreciate the suggestions. And we’re
going to continue to reach out to the tribal
community.
Mr. Benton: That’s great.
Ms. Berlyn: Thanks. Gloria?
Ms. Tristani: Yes. And first of all I want to
thank you for what you’re doing and how you’re
ramping up the effort here. It’s extraordinary what
you have to do in very little time.
And I was glad to hear that Louis you said you
might be sharing with us the information about six
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regions and the coordinators and all that because one
of the -- every person on this Committee has their
own networks in different parts of the country. And
we want to be as helpful as possible. But sometimes
we get the information way, way late. And that’s not
your doing.
But to the extent there’s a master list that can
be shared. These are the events that are going to
happen next month, different areas. Everyone here
can be, you know, put in their effort. And I would
just encourage you to share that information sooner
rather than later. I know you have tried. But
sometimes it just doesn’t get to us.
Mr. Sigalos: Hey, I believe that something --
Monday is the 17th. Monday is three months.
Ms. Tristani: Yep.
Mr. Sigalos: I mean, we’re at an all out
sprint. I’m just moving forward. And we’re moving
forward, you know, at the FCC. And we do have that
information. We just have to finish up some of the
DMA assignments right now.
So, some are incomplete. We have one last group
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going through training next week. Everybody’s being
trained in what we’re trying to do on how we do it
here at the Commission. Make sure we have some
quality control over what’s going on. They’re all
professionals, but not all of them have been in
consumer outreach before. So we will get that list
to everybody.
And the calendars, you know, at the DMA level
we’ll be sharing them. It gets really complicated
when they start to aggregate up. You know, all of
them together.
So, you know, those DMA coordinators -- the
whole purpose is to share a calendar. Here are the
community events. Let the broadcasters know what’s
going on. Maybe they want to cover it or let the
viewers know that, you know, there’s a sign up and
set up day at a local church or something. And just
the synergy is there to start working very well
together. So we’ll absolutely get that to you.
Ms. Tristani: So the extent you can share those
calendars with everyone here?
Mr. Sigalos: Yeah. I just think there’s no
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problem sharing. I just think that’s going to happen
more at the Designated Market Area level.
So once you get that contact, you know. So
whoever that name is, if, you know, it’s Albuquerque.
So and so is working in Albuquerque. I want to see
the Albuquerque. Can you share with me the
Albuquerque calendar?
Yeah, you call that person up. That’s not going
to be an issue.
Ms. Tristani: Well, no and that’s good. But
some of us don’t -- can’t sit there all day
identifying the different areas. So to the extent
there is publicly available information that you can
share about. This is the calendar.
Mr. Sigalos: Oh, yeah.
Ms. Tristani: Because not everybody has the
resources to be ok, this is, you know, let me check
with Albuquerque.
Mr. Sigalos: And you know it may be that -- I
agree with you. It’s just that I always figured --
Ms. Tristani: If it’s possible.
Mr. Sigalos: -- in my mind the practical
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application because like having online calendars,
alright, that everyone can access. Well that’s good
except for the fact that they better be maintained
properly. There better not be a misspelling or a
quote or you know, make sure that we’re honoring each
person. And that we, somebody here at the Commission
is dedicated to calendars only. You know, that kind
of stuff.
Ms. Tristani: Let me ask this now because I
understand that if you give us the managers and the
coordinators that will be very helpful to the extent
there are FCC sponsored events.
Mr. Sigalos: Oh FCC--
Ms. Tristani: -- Which there are including the
Commissioners --
Mr. Sigalos: Oh, yeah.
Ms. Tristani: -- Because that would be very
helpful as well.
Mr. Sigalos: Absolutely.
Ms. Tristani: So.
Mr. Sigalos: Absolutely. When we get out in
the community --
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Ms. Tristani: And not getting it the day before
because the day before people can’t organize and do
that.
Mr. Sigalos: Yeah, that’s a tough one.
Ms. Berlyn: Right.
Ms. Tristani: Whatever you can do.
Mr. Sigalos: Yeah.
Ms. Berlyn: Right.
Ms. Tristani: We want to help.
Ms. Berlyn: You know. Right. I just want to
get some clarification from Scott.
You know given the fact that this is our last
meeting, just in terms of communication there’s no
reason however that there wouldn’t be full lines of
communication with the representatives around the
table. So I think we can agree that we’ll continue
to provide as much information as possible to help
keep the flow of information about activity and local
contacts, all that information, going forward.
Mr. Sigalos: I mean, yeah, that’s my hope. I
mean that’s what we need.
Ms. Berlyn: Right. Right. Thanks.
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Thank you, Louis. Appreciate your coming down
and talking to us about the plans that the FCC has.
And we’re going to quickly move to Thomas Wyatt
to hear a little bit more information about DTV plans
that will help us provide the intro to our Working
Group lunch. So thank you Thomas --
Mr. Wyatt: Oh, sure.
Ms. Berlyn: -- For coming down.
Mr. Wyatt: Thank you, Debbie. And I’m glad to
be here. And I just want to say first that Kathy
wanted to be here, but she has a cooking schedule,
could not be. But she sends her well wishes and
appreciates all the hard work you’re doing as well.
So, but Louis gave an excellent overview of the
nationwide plan. And I want to maybe focus on a few
points. And I was reminded on the really huge
challenges we have in front of us.
I was at the National League of Cities the other
day presenting before a group of mayors, council
members and other government officials. And one
council member, I won’t mention her city, but she
said to me, “Well, frankly I’m having a little
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difficulty convincing my fellow council members that
this is a local issue. It seems like the FCC is
trying to get us to do their work.”
And of course I went into a long discussion
about why it’s important to the local community and
how much we need their help. But it points out one
of the challenges we have. We’re really doing all we
can to make sure that there’s no consumer in this
country left behind or left without the ability to
watch television after February 17th, 2009.
And Louis talked about the focus on some of the
DMAs and surely that’s taking place and we’ve
certainly leverage on our resources. He mentioned
that there were volunteers throughout the Commission
who are participating in the process. But we
continue to reach out in a comprehensive way
throughout the country.
The event in Orlando, Florida was very
beneficial because there was a lot of constructive
feedback from people that had familiarilized
themselves with what happened in Wilmington and what
worked. And we talked about ways that they could
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help us replicate that in other communities, not just
the top DMAs. So there’s a concerted effort to
really reach out throughout the country to make sure
that cities and towns are prepared.
And we’re doing all we can to support them
whether it’s providing documentation, whether
providing speakers. You all are aware that we have
the speakers there now. And we’ve received a fair
number of requests for speakers throughout the
country.
I think we’ve gotten over 130, maybe more than
that speaker requests so far. And those are still
coming in. So we’re doing our best to fulfill those
as well.
So we recognize the major challenges. And we’re
moving full steam ahead. We’re leveraging our
resources with Louis. And Louis has a very good plan
that you heard. And we’re really delivering to the
markets.
I just wanted to mention, just to give you an
idea of sort of our ongoing outreach. For example in
October we made over 790 visits around the country.
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Total to date we’ve made almost 9,500 visits on the
DTV transition.
We had 298 awareness sessions around the country
in October. To date we’ve had about two thousand,
almost 2,280 such sessions. We’ve attended 173
conferences and events in October. We’re up to
almost 850 now. We had 60 media interviews in
October. We’re up to nearly 170 now.
We obtained 137 new committed partnerships with
people that -- organizations that are willing to help
us get the word out and do things in their
communities, 137. To date, we’re up to almost 750
community partnerships with various organizations and
government agencies. So we’re really keeping the
focus on developing those partnerships because we’ve
learned that we really need the local communities to
be involved and engaged. And we’ve put a lot of
emphasis on that.
I’m glad Charles asked about the tribal outreach
with Brandon. There’s a very concerted effort to
reach all the tribal leaders and tribal communities
as well.
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So our partners in Area Four Agency on Aging
still doing a great job of working with us. I should
mention AARP as well. They’re doing a great job to
work with us and with seniors. And we’re keeping the
focus on reaching seniors around the country.
So I don’t want to keep rambling about all that
we’re doing. But I do want to emphasize that the
effort is comprehensive. You all are aware of the
grassroots contract solicitation that closed.
And we were going to get those contracts in
place as soon as possible. Those will be key to the
success of the transition as well. And we’re going
to keep working with NTIA.
We’re also glad to hear and see NTIA here to
explain what’s going on with the converter box
program. They’re doing a great job. And we’re doing
our best to stress the importance of getting the
converter boxes, applying for the converter boxes,
getting them and actually trying them.
One of the key messages that came out of
Wilmington experience is you need to try your
converter box, rescan it. One of the really good
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publications that we developed out of that experience
is the troubleshooting guide. I don’t know if you’ve
had a chance to look at it. But it’s a very good
guide on our website.
We also recognize that we need to get it out
through other means so we’re with all of our partners
to really get it around the country. It’s a standard
part of DTV presentation. I had a chance to make a
presentation about the troubleshooting guide in
Orlando the other day and it was well received.
So it’s really a useful tool, especially on the
scanning issue as well as the antenna issue. As you
all know there are a lot of annoyances to the antenna
issue. And a lot of consumers are may be in the dark
if they don’t get some help understanding what they
need to do.
So we’re moving full steam ahead. We’re excited
about the nationwide initiative. So far we’ve, I
think we’ve been to about 30 of the top DMAs already
with more to come.
And as Louis alluded to earlier to the extent
that we can share information about where we’re going
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to be, what we’re going to do. We’ll share that.
And if you have ideas for how we can build on that,
improve that. If you want to join us or participate,
just let us know.
So we’ll try to share that information so that
you can incorporate that into your plans as well.
So, Debbie, I don’t want to keep rambling about all
the work we do. I have more stats. I’ll just maybe
stop and take questions.
Ms. Berlyn: That’s fine, Thomas.
Does anyone have a question for Thomas about
what the FCC is doing? Charles?
Mr. Benton: Thomas, yeah. This morning we
learned from the NTIA that there’s an additional 4.5
million dollars in addition to the five million they
have for consumer education, so that there they have
about a 10 million dollar budget, 9.5. You had
originally a two and half million dollar budget for
consumer education. And my understanding is that
Congress appropriated another 20 million.
Is that true? Do you have the 20 million? And
if so, is there a plan?
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And if there is a plan, could it be shared with
us because we don’t know what’s going on. It’s very
hard for us to be creative in making new suggestions
of things that could go out that are not going on.
So I just would like to have a little bit of
clarification about the budget and the internal
process for making decisions about spending verses
whatever budget you do have. What is your budget
now? And who is in charge?
Mr. Wyatt: And I know I always sound like I’m
hedging when there’s a budget question because I am
hedging because frankly I don’t know all the
intricacies or details of the budget. I do know that
there’s additional money. And that money is being
devoted to the nationwide initiative and to the
overall outreach that we’re conducting.
Charles, I will promise to get back to you if I
can share more details about the budget. I will make
that promise to get back to you with more specifics.
Mr. Benton: Thank you.
Mr. Wyatt: But at this time I can’t really go
into any more detail.
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Mr. Benton: Great.
Ms. Berlyn: Anyone else have any questions for
Thomas?
Mr. Wyatt: Ok.
Ms. Berlyn: Ok, Brandon?
Mr. Stevens: Just one quick comment that I
wanted to mention earlier. Now when I was telling
you guys about wanting to be a little more involved
now that’s not to suggest that you guys aren’t doing
anything in Indian Country or anything like that
because I have had conversations with Shana Bearhand.
And I wanted to tell you that she’s doing an
excellent job with helping us.
And also with some of the other things that help
us in Indian Country, the Indian Telecommunications
Initiative meetings. Those are very helpful. We
hope to see those continue.
And whether it’s been radio, broadband, digital
television transition, low power FM or wireless
spectrum availability for our people and for the
country as a matter of fact it’s been very helpful.
I think you guys are to be applauded for a lot of the
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initiatives there. And I just wanted to make that
comment. But additionally anything else I can do to
help, please let me know. I don’t want to be -- I’d
like to be involved.
Mr. Wyatt: I appreciate that comment. And we
certainly will take you up on it. You’ll be hearing
from us. And I’m sure there are ways that we can
work together. So thank you, Brandon.
Ms. Berlyn: Thomas, I have one question which
I’m not sure if you can answer at this point. But
there is the DTV transition and then there’s another
transition that’s going on at the same time with a
new Administration. And of course the DTV transition
will take place after our other transition occurs.
So I just want to know what kind of coordination
there is between the transition team for the new
Administration and the DTV transition at the FCC.
Mr. Wyatt: Debbie, you’re very insightful
because I cannot tell you I don’t know what
coordination is taking place. I can tell you that
we’re moving full steam ahead. We haven’t let up one
bit in terms of our outreach goals and really trying
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to conduct outreach throughout the country. So that
is moving full steam ahead and has not been -- we
have not wavered in any respect on that.
I would imagine there would be some coordination
soon. And hopefully that’s something else that we
will be able to share with you at some point. Of
course, you know, someone else will probably make
that decision other than me.
But our goal would be to share as much
information with the CAC as we can because we
recognize just how valuable you all have been to this
process and how much we’ve relied on you going
forward as well. Cause I mean really 95 days is not
a lot of time. And when you think of it in terms of
weeks, what’s that about 12 or 13 weeks. Not much
time at all.
So we recognize that we have to keep up the hard
work. And hopefully we will not waver as we move
forward with all the goals that we set and the
nationwide initiative is well underway and is only
picking up more steam as we go along. So you all
will be getting more details about how that’s going
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and where we’re going with that.
Ms. Berlyn: And just one other point that I --
we’re going to talk at lunch about specific
recommendations to go forward with the DTV
transition. I think the FCC has also recognized that
the transition doesn’t end on February 17th, that
there will be a point after February 17th to sort of
iron out any issues that are still there. The coupon
program continues. And we know that given, you know
--
Mr. Wyatt: Right.
Ms. Berlyn: -- The situation in Wilmington
there may be a period of time after the 17th to also
continue to work on the transition.
Mr. Wyatt: Absolutely. For example, one thing
we’re doing is we’re making sure that our consumer
center is staffed and equipped to handle the, kind
of, fallout, if I can call it that. But we will
expect there to be a number of consumers that might
require some assistance and need it very quickly.
So we’re trying to make sure that our consumer
center is equipped to deal with those calls. We’re
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poised to provide meaningful solutions to those
consumers. We’ll be working with NTIA as well, very
closely, so another very good point.
And you’re right we are thinking beyond February
17th.
Ms. Berlyn: Great. Any other questions? Ok.
Thank you so much, Thomas, appreciate your help.
Wow, we are not only back on track schedule
wise, we are actually a little early. So we need to,
I’m sure, let’s take a break. I don’t see lunch out
yet, but it should be out within the next 20 minutes.
So let’s take a 15 minute break. And then if we
could have the DTV Transition Working Group come --
[Break in audio.]
[Break.]
Ms. Berlyn: We’re going to start the DTV
working group discussion. And I’m going to turn
things over to Paul. The Working Groups are
generally not -- oh, ok. We don’t usually broadcast
our Working Groups. So we’re going to have live mics
going here, but we won’t be -- this won’t be part of
the broadcasted meeting that takes place.
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So, we are going to now have a Working Group
discussion and then when we reconvene, we’re going to
take up these issues as a whole, Committee as a
whole. So I’m going to turn things over to Paul now,
Chair of the Working Group.
Mr. Schlauer: Ok. I think you all were just
given a handout from Charles Benton. And that can be
part of our discussion. It’s a little background.
As you know this CAC strongly supported the test
marketing -- the test effort in Wilmington and we’re
very pleased that was kind of a fully support, joint
venture with that Commissioner Copps’ and Chairman
Martin worked on together. And we’ve, of course,
heard about the results and the lessons learned. And
that’s all very positive.
A few days after it was all over Commissioner
Copps wrote a letter that I think you’ve all received
via email attachment that is dated September 12th
when he outlined in his letter nine suggestions for
follow up that could occur as a result of that. And
the one pager that was just passed out by Charles
that you had received earlier this week talks about
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that. And also kind of crystallizes down to possibly
four priorities taken from those nine for something
for us to consider talking about, endorsing, going
forward with.
I think that, I guess that the goal of this
discussion is to talk among ourselves to see if we
want to turn any of that into a recommendation for
the full group. And consequently push forward to the
FCC to show that we have a strong feeling that in
addition to the things that we’ve heard reported
today that we definitely want a strong focus on
certain efforts in the remaining months before
February. So I guess what I’m asking for is a
discussion to see what people think about the nine
things that Commissioner Copps put forth, the summary
items and to see if there’s any kind of consensus on
a recommendation to go forward this afternoon that
can be presented on behalf of the CAC to the
Commission as our position on it.
And so I guess I would ask for discussion and
comments from there.
Ms. Berlyn: Before we turn to that I just want
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to address another burning issue. And that’s drinks
for lunch. They are apparently on their way. So if
there’s someone who requires something other than
water, it will soon be here. Just wanted to mention
that.
Mr. Schlauer: Great. Thank you. Ok, Charles
and then Gene?
Mr. Benton: Yeah, Debra, if I could just add
one tiny, little, logistical point to Paul’s
excellent presentation. On the left hand side of
your folder here, are three documents. Number one --
well in addition to the agenda, is the original
Copps’ letter of September 12th.
It is also a three page sort of bullet point
summary of that letter. So that this is meant to
make -- to facilitate the discussion so that we can
look at bullet points instead of long paragraphs
which are hard to talk to. So that’s that.
And then there’s the letter from Martin -- I’m
sorry, the letter from Dingell and Markey to Chairman
Martin which really addresses point number six. And
so the discussion we passed out the email that Paul
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and I sent out on Wednesday. So that those of you
who haven’t seen it or don’t have it will have it in
front of you.
So that you want to take the email plus these
three back up documents in the left hand side of the
folder as the tools, so to speak, for this
discussion. And as Paul said the whole idea is
priorities, do we want to get behind some of these
recommendations or alternatively, all nine or all
ten? I mean, it’s up to the group.
Mr. Benton: Gene?
Ms. Berlyn: Can I add to that? So that we are
also not limited, excuse me, I just took a bite.
Limited by the recommendations here, some of these
are -- some of the issues that Commissioner Copps
recommended were issues that a lot of us had been
working on over the past two years. And there may be
other issues as well that as --
Mr. Benton: Right.
Ms. Berlyn: -- Those of us focused on the
consumer perspective may want to recognize for action
as well.
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Mr. Kimmelman: I just wanted to, before we go
through the substance maybe try to broaden the
context. Something that maybe hasn’t been as much on
the horizon until now. And that is that whatever
recommendations we make to ask the Commission to
immediately address those issues with the transition
team and the new Administration and with Congress
which is about to consider a stimulus package next
week, but also very likely to come back the first
week in January to discuss a broader stimulus
package.
And so the context is broadened now with the
possibilities of Congress looking to spend more money
to jump start the economy and looking for programs
that involve immediate employment as a key aspect of
that. If you consider everything that they’ve tried
in the last few months that has not worked because it
has not really enhanced consumer spending. It has
not enhanced investment in the ways they wanted.
And so there’s a real focus on growing the
economy that I don’t know that we -- that has been
considered in the context of the DTV transition.
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When you talk about Call Centers and you talk about
needing technicians who know how to hook up antennas
and reaching people. And even talk about possibly
investing in manufacturing more boxes or making sure
the inventory is large enough to hit a spike in
demand and then how to get that out to people in a
way.
These are things probably in the past we would
have said there’s no way the government is going to
take care of that or there’s no way the private
sector is going to take care of that. And I think
there actually is a broader opportunity here. So I
urge us to consider the recommendations in that
context that there really is, I think, a much broader
opportunity.
And so that includes even this question of the
legal interpretation of the expiration of the coupons
whether or not that was an appropriate legal
interpretation. We now have Congress that will be,
for the first time, really, really focused on how
this transition is going to happen, starting in
January when they come back. And they’re going to
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want to know what can we do to make this work better?
So I think those can be almost deemed to be
reissued, if that is what there is a political
support to do. And that while that would mess up
probably the current Administration of the program,
it could be in the context of Congress also
indicating it wants to make sure there are enough
converter boxes for everybody who needs them. So I
think there are a number of opportunities here that
go beyond what even these, you know, very important
recommendations from Commissioner Copps and from the
leaders on the Energy and Commerce Committee have
proposed.
Mr. Schlauer: Great. Fabulous. Good point.
Fabulous.
Ok, anybody else want to make some suggestions
or comments? Yes, Cheryl?
Ms. Heppner: Wait, I’m chewing. Ok. I just
wanted to add a recommendation to one of these.
I’m not sure whether it would fit in ramping up
the Call Center or educating consumers on DTV
troubleshooting, maybe in both. And I missed a lot
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of this morning. I apologize. I had to go upstairs
for a meeting. So if some of this was said, I
apologize.
But as you all know there’s been huge amounts of
problems with the digital transition for people using
close captions. And those problems are just
exacerbating. And so I would like for the FCC to, in
addition to setting up a team, which thankfully
Commissioner Copps did recommend convening a working
group on digital closed captioning. That’s the tenth
item.
In addition to that, I would like for the FCC to
have a dedicated line, a dedicated phone line, email
box, you know, input line for people having questions
related to close caption and to publicize that line.
And to populate the people answering that line with
individuals that are knowledgeable. Although frankly
there’s so many questions I don’t know whether
they’ll ever be able to find people that are
knowledgeable.
But at least people who can gather the questions
and inquiries in an intelligent way. And maybe even
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categorize them. And eventually prepare them in a
way that they can be then handed over to this team of
engineers who will start tackling the problems.
Mr. Schlauer: Ok.
Mr. Hedlund: Gene regarding your question on
the availability of converter boxes or DTAs. The
information we have suggests that inventory is not a
problem. I think we heard from Sara from NTIA
confirmed that and that there is presently in stores
and now available online as well, tremendous numbers
of DTAs.
And my assumption which I will check out is that
the demand in forecast that was made by the
manufacturers as well as retailers was based on
estimates of, you know, the number of TVs that are
going to need these boxes and not necessarily
tailored to how many coupons are going to be
available or whether additional money would be
available. If that information is different, I will
be sure to let you know.
And we’ll also hope to be able to bring back
more information on what -- if there are any
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particular plans by manufacturers and retailers to
address any potential problem at the end of at around
February 17th. Again my understanding is there is no
concern. There is plenty of supply and resources in
place to make sure that there are sufficient boxes
available.
Mr. Schlauer: Does anybody?
Ms. Tristani: I have a question.
Mr. Schlauer: Ok. Go ahead. Sure.
Ms. Tristani: It was a follow up on that. One
of the recommendations of the 10 listed here is
number eight is to encourage the rapid deployment of
small, battery-powered, DTV sets. Do you know if
that’s happening already or?
Mr. Hedlund: Sure. I would we got CEA and CERC
got the letter from Chairman Martin asking about the
availability of portable DTVs as well as battery-
powered, DTAs that could work with portable, analog
televisions. And my understanding is that the
Genesis of that request was in a hearing when Gene
Green raised a question about this very issue. We
filed our response and it is part of our filing the
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quarterly DTV reports filing.
And in there we said that portable DTVs are
widely available. You can get them from Amazon, from
Radio Shack and Best Buy. There are a number of
models that are out there.
It was a fairly, you know, popular segment
before. We anticipate that it will continue to be.
Some of these sets are available as for a little as
150 dollars. So it’s, you know, it’s a new market
segment. You know, there is --
Ms. Tristani: And --
Mr. Hedlund: -- And manufacturers are
responding --
Ms. Tristani: Are these small sets or medium
sized sets?
Mr. Hedlund: These are small sets.
Ms. Tristani: Small sets.
Mr. Hedlund: Yes. These are portable, battery-
operated, DTVs.
Ms. Tristani: Do you know if there might be a
price -- if they might be available at a lesser? I
mean, I know --
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Mr. Hedlund: What’s -- so, it’s a brand new
product.
Ms. Tristani: Ok.
Mr. Hedlund: It’s a brand new product segment,
right? So as with any CE products as they’re more
and more these come out, prices go down. But
already, you know, this early the fact that’s there’s
sets available for as little as 150 dollars, which I
recognize is a lot of money for a significant part of
the population. But that’s still, you know, a far
cry from the initial price of DTVs when they first
rolled out.
Ms. Berlyn: There are no battery-operated,
converter boxes. So you can’t convert -- you can’t
have an analog battery TV.
Mr. Hedlund: You can’t. No, there are.
Ms. Berlyn: There are?
Mr. Hedlund: Yeah, those are available. And
they’re referenced in here.
Ms. Berlyn: Can you use the coupon to purchase
those?
Mr. Hedlund: I don’t believe -- I have to check
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that. I don’t know because it’s an accessory. It’s
not the box itself.
Mr. Schlauer: One think I am wondering is if
anybody that’s, you know, working very directly in
the field with at risk communities. Following
Wilmington, I mean a lot of the calls were obviously
people who were having trouble hooking up their boxes
or antenna questions or as we heard earlier today
about realizing they had to scan, you know, properly
set their TVs and do the scanning and everything
else. Has there been any good examples that anybody
knows about of kind of, in home assistance that
whether through AARP or other local groups that have
gone out to people?
I guess I’m thinking of what Gene said about
even the world of jobs and creative ways to help
people. Have these 40 minute phone calls that Lou
talked about, was that all it took with everybody or
was there situations where literally the only answer
was somebody going to their home. And I’m wondering
if there’s been community groups or other
organizations that have literally done that or
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assisted people in that regard?
Looks like Deb is about to speak, but also
Brenda.
Ms. Pennington: The Office of the People’s
Council of DC, we had a woman come in that represents
a local group. I believe it’s TransitiontoDTV.org.
That’s her website.
And she came in actually to give us a
demonstration on hooking it up. And we only got four
channels when we scanned. And the theory was that
since we were in an office building that we weren’t
able to get as many channels.
And then she went -- she had several different
boxes. She went to a higher end box. And we were
able to get maybe two more channels.
But I’m saying all this to say that there are
some local community groups that are doing that kind
of work. And we had them come in. And you’re right
while we sat around and, you know, I’m a member of
this group, reportedly I knew some information on it,
had an expert come in who has been educating
consumers about it. And we needed help in
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troubleshooting as well. So it’s a really big issue.
Ms. Berlyn: Yeah. To answer your question,
Paul, I know that providing that hands on assistance
is part of both NTIA’s 4.5 million dollar grant
program as well as the RFP that the FCC has,
requested input and request for funding for community
organizations to provide that sort of assistance. So
I think right now it’s kind of scattered.
And you know, there’s no coordinated effort. I
couldn’t tell you that, you know, everywhere there is
such an organization. There are in some areas
volunteer organizations that have started to help
with that. But I know we’re three months out. We do
expect that there will be more assistance available
given these two funding programs that are at NTIA and
FCC.
Mr. Schlauer: Right and maybe, as with Charles’
budget question before, maybe we simply haven’t had
that information given to us so we don’t know because
it isn’t known yet who’s going to get the grants and
what the details are of their proposals or -- but I
guess, I have a feeling that that’s going to be
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something that’s going to be of great need certainly
come February. And I guess, you know, so some of
these recommendations kind of certainly speak to
those kinds of questions even if they don’t
specifically talk about in-home assistance.
Ms. Berlyn: Karen has a --
Mr. Schlauer: Ok. Karen?
Ms. Peltz Strauss: Just following up on this.
These are -- there are free from the FCC. I just
wonder whether there’s any way for this Committee to
find out what’s happening with that.
You know, the groups, there are several around
this table I think that applied and were planning on
actually starting already. And it just seems that
with this transition happening imminently I don’t
understand, for the record, why an agency would spend
hundreds of thousands of dollars on a NASCAR car that
crashed and blew up in flames and doesn’t give money
to community groups to help people fix these sets in
their homes. I mean, I’m just astonished at the fact
that they have not released that money.
So I don’t know if there’s anything that our
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group can do. But if we can, it would be nice.
Mr. Benton: Is this the money for which the
deadline was the 21st of October?
Ms. Peltz Strauss: Yes and yes.
Ms. Tristani: That’s just one RFP. There are
other RFPs.
Ms. Berlyn: That’s one RFP. There are others.
That’s right.
Ms. Tristani: And just for the record maybe
they haven’t awarded these yet but when -- and this
is not to shoot the messenger. But when we ask about
budget and the FCC representative says I cannot tell
you anything about budget, it’s flabbergasting. But,
you know.
We’ve got to work with what we have. So maybe
we need to add to the recommendation to make sure
that the public monies that have appropriated by
Congress for these efforts -- there’s accountability
of how it’s spent. Transparency, I think that’s very
important.
Ms. Berlyn: Yeah. Yeah. Good point.
Mr. Schlauer: I mean is there any feeling that,
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you know, on how we should proceed? I mean should we
say that we as a group strongly recommend that not
only Commissioner Copps’ nine items in the tenth
edition be addressed, but also we get report feedback
back to us as to what is being done about those
recommendations? Is that a possibility?
Should we scale it back and just pick a few as a
top priority? What do people think? I guess I’m
looking for potentially, if not more discussion, even
a motion.
Ms. Berlyn: I don’t think she’s quite ready.
Mr. Schlauer: Dodie?
Ms. Tschirch: Forgive my stupidity. But as I
look through these I’m not really -- I don’t really
understand how number nine would work. And if we’re
going to vote on something like this I want to make
sure that I understand it first.
I’m not sure what happens to that bandwidth from
those analog channels and if they really can continue
to somehow broadcast messages on there.
Ms. Berlyn: Can someone from the -- well, I
know Ann and Doug might be able to address that.
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Ms. Bobeck: Under the Budget Deficit Act of
2005 that established our transition date of February
17th, we must shut off our analog signals on that
date. There is pending legislation introduced by
Senator Rockefeller in the House by Capps that would
extend our analog signals where technically feasible
to allow some programming. It would be a slate that
gives information about the transition.
Depending on the legislation, either two weeks
to a month out, to allow those who missed the
message, not from a lack of our trying and good faith
with our one billion dollar education campaign. But,
you know the best of our abilities some people just
aren’t going to make that transition. So for those
who turn on their TV on February 18th, at least one
channel in a market is at least the theory, there
would be an analog station that would direct those
viewers as they did in Wilmington to apply for a
coupon or call the FCC for more information for a
limited period of additional time.
That may be taken up in the session starting up
next week in the Lame Duck session. We expect it to
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do so. The NAB Television Board of Directors has
taken a formal resolution to support such
initiatives.
Again it’s for technically feasible. It’s not
going to be every television station. A lot of folks
are transitioning and when they shut off they’ve got
to move so that others can relocate. So there’s a
lot of stations or other stations are simply not
available. But in some markets it may be,
particularly where you’re less congested off the
eastern corridor there may be one or more stations in
the market where that may be available.
Mr. Wiley: Can I just, one thing?
Ms. Berlyn: Yeah, Doug?
Mr. Wiley: Just add one thing to that. Senator
Rockefeller and Congresswoman Capps are working on
coordinating their bills right now as we speak to re-
introduce them, if and when the Congress comes back
next week. And the bills will be introduced as
identical in order to make them easier to move
through the process. So, again we’re supportive of
that legislation.
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Ms. Berlyn: So, can I just respond in part to
your question. It would seem to me that what we
should work on in terms of recommendations are
actions that the FCC can actually take without an act
of Congress. And that that’s because we do advise
the FCC.
Gloria, you disagree.
Ms. Tristani: No, no. And I didn’t mean to
interrupt.
Ms. Berlyn: Oh, ok.
Ms. Tristani: But this is just to recommend to
the FCC that they advise the Congress. That’s
nothing more than that. And if I could add here,
every one of these recommendations -- I mean I
understand it would be nice to whittle them down to
four. But every one of these is important in its own
way. And unless they’re exceedingly controversial I
would recommend that we recommend them all. I’m not
saying that very artfully, but --
Ms. Bobeck: The only one that I question at
this point and juncture with 95 days out is the
feasibility that they’ll be additional full test
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market, unless you count Hawaii as the big, grand,
test market on January 15th. I think when we were
looking at when this was addressed, right after
Wilmington, that may have been a possibility. But on
November 14th, I don’t know the realistic expectation
that that would move forward.
I just point that out as where we are now in
that process.
Male Speaker [off mic]:
Ms. Bobeck: In Hawaii the reason we are
transitioning early in Hawaii is because there is
Hawaiian Petrel. It’s a migratory, nocturnal bird.
Their nesting season on the slopes of the volcano is
in February.
And so to take down our analog towers in Maui,
we’re going to do so in January. That’s going to
force us to transition early. So it is really to
protect an endangered species and a species protected
under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
So as in consultation with the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, Senator Inouye’s office and the
FCC, the Hawaii broadcasters agreed to transition a
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month early to protect that species.
Mr. Schlauer: Will there be a message on the
screen on the next day in Hawaii’s market like there
was in Wilmington?
Ms. Bobeck: I would anticipate that they are
working on those efforts right now since they don’t
have a mandatory, statutory deadline. And of course,
that is an incredibly complex effort in Hawaii
because not all stations, depending on the Islands,
some of those are analog only, some of those are
transit or receiver. So that will be a multi-
faceted, coordinated effort with multiple slates of
information depending on what Island you are what
information or slate you will be receiving on January
16th.
Mr. Schlauer: My guess a lot of people in
Hawaii will want to watch the inauguration five days
later.
Ms. Bobeck: I would agree.
Ms. Tristani: Ann, I have a question. Which
one were you referring to when you said you question
the full?
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Ms. Bobeck: It’s the additional field testing.
I guess --
Ms. Tristani: Well it doesn’t say all markets.
It says, maybe we say as many markets as feasible at
this point.
Ms. Bobeck: Ok. It’s just the full scale test
market. So, you know the nuance of that is now what
broadcasters are doing which is the soft analog shut
off test to raise awareness.
And just so you all know for example in
Philadelphia on November 17th, all the broadcasters
in the entire Pennsylvania are shutting off at the
same time so that there’s a soft test to raise
awareness. And another example is on December 2nd,
L.A. is doing that as well.
Ms. Tristani: Well, I know a lot of is
happening.
Ms. Bobeck: So it’s just a nuance of that.
Ms. Tristani: Yeah, but I would just to the
extents feasible or time permitting.
Ms. Bobeck: Right. I think that’s an adequate
point.
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Mr. Schlauer: Might even just add, you know,
continue to conduct additional field testing or
something like that.
Ms. Berlyn: Lisa?
Ms. Hamilton: A question for clarification. We
were talking about the small, battery-powered DTV
sets on number eight. Do you know if the DTV sets,
that the small ones are caption capable?
They don’t have to be. The question is did they
choose to be?
Mr. Hedlund: I don’t have that information.
But I can find out.
Ms. Hamilton: Alright. Because if we’re going
to push for that. I’d want some kind of a
clarification that set if they’re not able to be
captioned which is possible that these DTV boxes
could make a big difference to people who are deaf or
hard of hearing if they’re battery-powered.
It could be instead of giving out a small
television set you could give out the DTV boxes that
are battery-powered for emergencies.
Mr. Hedlund: Yeah. And to just to clarify one
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thing I said earlier on that. The battery powered
DTV converter boxes are under NTIA’s rules, coupon
eligible. The battery packs that go into electric,
you know, traditional DC powered DTAs or AC power
DTAs are an accessory minusing, those are not, those
may not be eligible.
So, but I will find out about it.
Mr. Schlauer: Brandon?
Mr. Stevens: As far as the outgoing number
nine, I wanted to get in on that conversation a
little while ago. The outgoing message. I was under
the impression and I’m asking this as a question for
anybody that knows in the room.
One of the reasons to transition from analog to
digital is to open up that spectrum and potentially
start testing for distributed antenna systems for
broadband services. Isn’t that part of the activity
that goes on? So I didn’t know whether to question
the message that appears or how long that can appear
or how soon will we see testing in certain market
areas or certain areas for the distribution of
broadband?
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Because I’ve heard that discussion, so I didn’t
know if that was still a question somewhere.
Ms. Bobeck: I think the layman’s answer is that
at that point we would be tenants because that
spectrum has already been bought and paid for --
Mr. Steven: Was it?
Ms. Bobeck: -- With the exception of the 24
megahertz that’s allocated for public safety. The
practical I think reality is that although that
spectrum is paid for with 20 billion dollars in the
two to four intervening weeks subsequent to February
17th, I don’t know that anyone will actually be
utilizing that spectrum immediately or maybe they
would be in the kind of sudden thinking the American
transition allows some stations to remain on. And I
think those are the discussions taking place right
now on Capitol Hill.
Mr. Stevens: Ok. Just a question.
Ms. Tristani: And it is a very short time
period, right?
Ms. Bobeck: Exactly. I think right now they’re
only talking about two weeks to 30 days.
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Ms. Berlyn: Brenda and then I’d like to make a
point.
Ms. Pennington: Excuse me, could you give the
dates again for the soft testing in Philly and L.A.?
Ms. Bobeck: And Philly includes actually the
entire state of Pennsylvania. It’s November 17th, so
on Monday. And then L.A. is on December 2nd.
And anyone who wants to email me I can let them
know what other soft tests are coming around in the
markets as well. There’s a lot that are popping up
throughout the country. So as broadcasters come
online we’re gathering that information as well.
Ms. Pennington: Right. Also, how were the
jurisdictions the state selected primarily I wanted
to know why wasn’t DC selected?
Ms. Bobeck: It’s never -- it’s self selecting.
Ms. Pennington: Oh, ok.
Ms. Bobeck: It is never the broadcasters
getting together with their state associations with
general managers and working together and saying
let’s coordinate a soft shut off test. So it is
folks getting together and coordinating tests on the
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ground, voluntarily.
Ms. Pennington: Ok. Thank you.
Ms. Bobeck: We anticipate they’ll be doing much
more in the future.
Ms. Berlyn: Paul, as I look at the original
list, the summary of the original list of activities
from Commissioner Copps, there are a couple that I
think the FCC has or is addressing. And I’m not so
sure that we would really want to -- in order to give
strength to our other recommendations I’m not sure we
want to include something that we know is, sort of,
already in process such as the special FCC team to
deal with needs of at risk communities. Based on
what Louis has shared and Thomas, I believe that that
is underway. You know, that has just certainly
ramped up since Wilmington.
And then the other one is -- let’s see, hold on.
There was another one that I saw here. Sorry. I’ll
find the other one as we talk.
But that would be one that I would recommend we
perhaps either we recognize that that effort has
begun and is underway or we don’t have it on there.
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Ms. Tristani: Could we address that by above
the one -- let’s see the Commission’s Consumer
Advisory Committee recommends that the Commission
take the following actions or something that the
Commission take the following or continue. So that
we don’t get into fine tuning every one because -- I
mean, I think for example under two they’re doing a
lot of it, but do they have a single point of contact
on the Commission? I’m not sure. So I don’t know.
Paul, is there a way to amend the introductory
language that indicates that maybe some of these
actions are already happening?
Mr. Schlauer: Well I mean in theory it would
have been nice to have had a report back, you know.
Ms. Tristani: Yeah.
Mr. Schlauer: Because this was September 12th.
And for all we know, you know, pretty extensive
effort has been embarked upon in several of them.
But we just don’t necessarily know.
I mean maybe we can figure out a phrase to lead
into it to say that you know, we would welcome, you
know a report from the Commission on, you know, what
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action in response to Copps’ letter the FCC has
taken. And also urge it to, you know, immediately
put efforts into these nine areas or these ten areas,
something like that. I mean that’s not very well
written or verbalized.
But yeah, otherwise, we could spend a lot of
time trying to figure it out or asking for feedback.
I mean we -- same with the field testing and some of
the other issues. It seems like there’s a way to
just request action or information as to what action
has been taken might be an adequate way to address
it.
Ms. Tristani: That would.
Ms. Berlyn: Oh.
Mr. Schlauer: Rich?
Mr. Ellis: We could just amend that second
paragraph to say that the Commission’s Consumer
Advisory Committee recommends that the Commission
initiate, continue or more fully implement the
following actions.
Ms. Tristani: That would do it right there.
Mr. Schlauer: That would be good, yeah.
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Ms. Berlyn: Say that again. Say that again.
Ms. Pennington: Thank you.
Mr. Ellis: You should be listening next time.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Ellis: The last meeting I get all the digs
in now. Just amend the second paragraph there. The
Commission’s Consumer Advisory Committee recommends
that the Commission initiate, continue or more fully
implement the following actions as suggested by
Commissioner Copps.
Ms. Tristani: Was everything here suggested by
Commissioner Copps? So I mean, I don’t mean to --
Mr. Ellis: Just take out those last words then.
Ms. Tristani: But just take out Copps.
Mr. Ellis: Yeah.
Ms. Berlyn: Yeah, I agree. These are our
recommendations. We should own them. Yup.
Ms. Pennington: So actions would be the last
word in the sentence?
Ms. Berlyn: Yes.
Mr. Schlauer: Any further comments or? Karen?
Ms. Peltz Strauss: I just want to make sure
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that we get something in that says -- that asks the
FCC to set up a hot line for closed captioning issues
and video description issues.
Mr. Schlauer: Well and that’s number ten. So
we’ve got to be sure that that’s --
Ms. Peltz Strauss: Yeah, it’s different than
number ten because number ten asks for a working
group.
Mr. Schlauer: Oh, ok.
Ms. Peltz Strauss: It really goes really more
to number three in ramping up the FCC Call Center. I
guess there’s two ways of doing this. One is to just
add where it says technical staff should, at the
bottom of that first sentence. The second sentence
says beyond duty for a specific questions about
converter boxes, antennas. We could add closed
captioning, video description or other issues.
Or we could say the Advisory Committee also
recommends that the FCC establish a separate hot line
to respond to technical questions pertaining to
closed captioning and video description. The latter
is preferable. It really depends on what the group
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wants to do.
Ms. Tristani: Fine.
Ms. Peltz Strauss: If you feel comfortable with
the latter, I would recommend the latter.
Ms. Berlyn: I’m sorry. You’re seconding
Karen’s point.
Mr. Benton: Seconding Karen.
Ms. Berlyn: Ok, thank you.
Ms. Tristani: I heard it here. But we had
talked a little bit about budget and accountability.
And I don’t know if we want to have a number 11 on --
Ms. Berlyn: Accountability?
Ms. Tristani: Accountability of public money
spent.
Ms. Berlyn: Yeah, I think that’s an idea.
Ms. Tristani: Let’s see.
Mr. Schlauer: Well and maybe in light of what
Gene Kimmelman said, maybe we should reference the
transition to the new Administration that --
Ms. Tristani: To the extent practicable work
with the --
Mr. Schlauer: -- The new Administration to --
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Ms. Tristani: Who’s good at drafting here?
Mr. Schlauer: Rick, get busy because it sounds
like he’s, Kimmelman, is suggesting that it may open
up new opportunities and maybe that could be an
overarching statement is part of this rather than an
item on the list.
Ms. Berlyn: Yeah, you know, just to talk a
little bit more about that. He was talking about
the, you know, possibility the economic stimulus plan
offering an opportunity.
Mr. Schlauer: Right.
Ms. Berlyn: And you know, we certainly want any
possible avenue explored and utilized. But, you
know, one of the other issues that Gene was raising
which I think is perhaps part of the contingency plan
is that we do stress the need to watch and address
what happens in the month or so before the
transition. With NTIA telling us that they can’t get
coupons out to consumers who request them a couple
weeks in advance.
We want the FCC to work with Congress, NTIA,
etc. to address those final days of the transition,
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the challenges and ensure that consumers get the sort
of assistance that they need with the transition.
Ms. Tristani: Well there is a number four deals
with that. And maybe we need to strengthen that
because now we know what the problems are. So,
number four, the two bullets. Let’s see. From
transition, let’s see, to -- I mean is it not covered
by the language that’s there unless we want to
specifically talk about the coupon problems.
Ms. Berlyn: Maybe. One thing we can do is add
NTIA in that first bullet point where it says
consultation with Congress, industry, we should add
to NTIA.
Ms. Tristani: Well, but the paragraph above
says the Commission and the National
Telecommunications and Information Administration.
Ok, so --
Ms. Berlyn: Oh, you’re right. You’re right.
Ms. Tristani: So I think it’s covered there
already, but unless somebody wants to add a bullet.
This was language from September, a bullet that says
make sure there’s enough funding for converter -- I
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don’t know. I mean, I don’t know how far you’d want
to go with this, but --
Ms. Berlyn: Yeah, I guess looking at,
practically speaking, looking at number four. I
don’t know how important it is to set up a joint
working group to accomplish that. We just want a
contingency plan.
I don’t know whether, you know, we have to set
up a working group to accomplish that. We just want
cooperation between, you know, the responsible
agencies in -- I don’t know. I think --
Ms. Tristani: Well, how about should instead of
establish a joint working group, take that out and
say ensure that they coordinate and, you know.
Ms. Berlyn: Ensure coordination to achieve the
following.
Ms. Tristani: Right.
Ms. Berlyn: Yeah. Paul, are you getting all
these recommendations down?
Mr. Schlauer: No.
Ms. Berlyn: You’re not?
Mr. Schlauer: I see other people studiously
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writing. I assume --
Ms. Berlyn: Well, ok. Well because I have not
been writing either. Scott, we may need to put heads
together to really come up with the final words for
this. I think we’re starting to get the --
Ms. Tristani: Well I don’t think it’s that
complicated. And I’m concerned about timing here
because there are things happening in Congress next
week or that, excuse me, may be happening --
Ms. Berlyn: Potentially.
Ms. Tristani: -- Potentially. I know it
changes by the minute and by the hour. But this is
our last opportunity and --
Ms. Berlyn: Oh, I’m not talking about delaying
for, you know. I’m talking about, you know, taking
20 minutes today to make sure we have the language
down.
Ms. Tristani: Oh, ok. Then we need to take it
now because that needs to be fixed. But I do think
we need to add a number 11 which addresses the budget
and accountability issues, which addresses the
transition and addresses the fact that Congress may
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be meeting next week.
And of course we’re not going to be recommending
to Congress. We’re going to be recommending to the
FCC that they recommend using those opportunities in
whatever way it was that Gene suggested. So, and it
can be very vague and open ended without being
controversial. But there are concerns.
Ms. Berlyn: Perhaps what we can do is we could
have the folks around the table that have recommended
specific language to just sit together with Paul and
get it all down and make sure we have the wording in
the right document. And then we can -- we have
planned on this agenda to have this working group
discussion. And then to meet, right now we’re
meeting as a working group, but then to meet as a CAC
and approve this.
So between now and the time in which we want to
look at this to approve it, perhaps there could be a
small group that would do that. And, you know, I’ve
heard recommendation for language from Gloria, from
Karen, was there anyone?
Ms. Tristani: Well, yours is four. You
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recommended four.
Ms. Berlyn: Yeah. Is there anyone else who
would like to be a part of that who has specific
language? Oh, yeah. Rich, you had great language.
Right. We have to put you in there and Charles.
Ms. Tristani: -- Already in there.
Ms. Berlyn: Oh, ok. Ok. Does anyone have any
other points to raise? Any other issues that we’re
not covering in this recommendation?
Ms. Tristani: Or anything that’s very
controversial that we’ve discussed already so that we
don’t work on language and then --
Ms. Berlyn: No?
Ms. Tristani: Ok.
Ms. Berlyn: Alright. It is five minutes to
one. Why don’t we take another fifteen minute break?
Let’s have the subgroup -- is this ok, Scott? Yeah.
We’ll have the drafting group meet. You know,
we’ll just pick a corner here in the room and go do
that. Please be back by 1:15, in this room, in your
chair because Commissioner Adelstein is coming to
talk to us. And I want to make sure everybody is
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here for that.
So we’re going to break now. We’re going to get
back at 1:15. We’re going to hear from Commissioner
Adelstein. And then we’re going to meet as a CAC as
a whole, review this recommendation and take a vote.
Ok.
[Break.]
Ms. Berlyn: We have a Commissioner who is
extremely prompt. Told me he’d be here at 1:15 and
you were here at 1:15. Thank you so much.
We appreciate your coming by, Commissioner
Adelstein to address the CAC. We know that you and
the other Commissioners have been on the road quite a
bit of late on the DTV transition. And we appreciate
everything you’re doing. So, thank you for coming
today.
Commissioner Adelstein: Well, thanks for having
me. I just wanted to thank you all for helping us
with this enormous task before us of DTV. I think --
unfortunately I don’t think we’re really prepared as
we should be right now for the mess that we have
coming upon us.
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I have been all over the country, as you
mentioned. We’ve all been traveling. I think it was
a very good idea both to educate and also to educate
ourselves as well as the public about what’s
happening out there. And what I see really isn’t
pretty.
I mean there’s a lot of confusion. There’s a
fairly high level of awareness. That’s not where we
should be putting our resources.
But there’s a lot of confusion about what to do.
And in particular what we did learn from Wilmington
which was a great idea to do is that a lot of the
problems are people who need hands on assistance.
People with disabilities, people who are elderly,
people who may not speak English as a first language,
people who are just technophobes in general, even
normal people who go through and do everything right
and still find their TV doesn’t work, wonder why.
Maybe it’s there antenna. Maybe they forgot to
scan. Maybe they forgot to set it to channel three.
There’s going to be a lot of questions that come on
the date.
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And I think you’re working on some
recommendations here today which I really appreciate
and looking forward to seeing. I know a working
group was kind of honing them. I want to throw out
some ideas for you to consider adding as part of that
that I’d like your input on here.
We have a little time for dialogue about what
the potential is. I mean what I see is the biggest
challenge before us is getting a field operation in
place, people that can actually help those in need
when somebody has a problem. We are finding, for
example, that when people call our phone line it
might take 45 minutes to walk people through setting
it up.
And we have time to do that now. And the
broadcasters sometimes their engineers will walk
somebody through when they call the station. And
it’s nice when you have them coming in in a trickle.
But when we get them coming in in a flood.
We’re not prepared to get to people’s homes, on the
ground or having phone banks in the areas that can
take the overflow from the FCC one and walk people
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through. And take the time it needs to actually walk
through their individual issues because a lot of
times, I mean I get some of the most technical
questions when I’m on the field.
Very good questions from the public about, you
know, how does their VCR work with this? Can they
tape at the same time they’re watching a show? You
know, how do they hook it up with their VCR?
What if they have -- one woman had done
everything right. She was really trying. And nobody
could figure it out. We had engineers there that
couldn’t figure out what her problem was. And we
thought maybe the mice had chewed through the coax to
the antenna on the roof.
I mean who’s going to walk folks through when
they have legitimate questions like this? And who’s
going to help those who really can’t do this for
themselves? That’s what I’m mostly concerned about.
I mean early on we talked about the Boy Scouts.
People threw out that idea because it wasn’t going to
work. Right now we don’t have a plan to do that.
I think, most fundamental is that we need some
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kind of field operation.
Secondly, in order to minimize the amount of
work that this field operation has to do. And the
demands of the phone centers which certainly need to
be beefed up. And I think that’s going to be one of
your recommendations is the soft cut offs.
These soft cut offs are enormously successful.
A lot of broadcasters are doing them. We’ve asked a
marketing company to come up with best practices,
working with NAB on that.
Promax BDA was at a conference and they’re just
going to give broadcasters an idea of what works and
what doesn’t. They can decide for themselves what
they want to do with it, whether they want to use
that or not. But you know, there’s a lot of things
like this that needed to be better planned out.
We’re kind of doing it on an ad hoc basis.
But the more of the soft cut offs that we do and
the more effectively they’re put together, we’re
finding we get a lot of phone calls. We get them
here. And we need to coordinate with broadcasters
that are doing soft cut offs.
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In other words cutting off the signal for a
period of time, be it 30 seconds, five minutes, 30
minutes, running an analog notice saying, if you’re
seeing this message, you’re not ready for digital.
And those who are ready get the message that they’re
ready. And you can run programming about how to fix
it during the time, to the analog part of that
programming, a lot of ways of doing that that work.
We get a spike in calls when that happens.
The FCC needs to coordinate so that we are ready
to take the number of phone calls that you get when
that happens. And be prepared for it so we know what
time. And our office is properly staffed so we can
be used as a resource for an 800 number if localities
don’t have sufficient capacity on their own. A lot
of communities are working with their local PBS which
has call centers and helping to staff it with their
engineers and others that are trained.
But overall the more calls we get and the more
problems that we resolve through these soft cut offs,
the fewer are going to plague us on February 18th
when people wake up and find out they’re not ready.
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So better to get us a lot of little spikes in calls
now and deal with as much as that backlog now as we
can through the period of soft cut offs. So maybe
one of your recommendations could be to encourage
those and to make sure that they’re done in a way
that’s most effective.
And I’m not sure what that is. I’m not a
marketing expert. That’s why it’s up to market
experts to figure that out and NAB and broadcasters
know how to get the word out to the public.
Those are just a couple thoughts that I would
have on areas that I’m particularly focused on the
need to address. And I’d be curious to get your
response. I don’t know how much time we have. But
I’d like to have a bit of a dialogue, if I could.
If you think that’s a good idea. If you think
-- there’s a lot of other good ideas I know that
you’re recommending. I support them all. And I
think we need to do it.
I mean part of the overall problem is -- I’ve
been saying this for a year and a half that we don’t
have a plan still, nor a coordinated federal
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response. I mean most recently I heard that there
was a problem with delivering this. They were being
sent third class -- where was this to?
Ms. Berlyn: To Hawaii.
Commissioner Adelstein: Hawaii, right. They
were sent third class to Hawaii. And then they’re
just sitting there and they get thrown away. And now
Hawaii is going early, you’ve got a bunch of coupons
in the dumpster that can’t be replicated.
Why weren’t we talking to the post office? You
know I recommended a long time ago having an
interagency task force that would coordinate with all
the different agencies of government that are
affected. This is the kind of thing that that was
designed to address and many other problems with the
analog pass through when NTIA apparently didn’t know
that a lot of these stations weren’t actually
transitioning or how important that issue was.
We had to scramble. And now most of the boxes
do have analog pass through. But some of them still
don’t. A lot of people have them that don’t have
analog pass through. And there’s going to be
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confusion with that.
So we did have that. The JO told us. I
testified over a year ago about the need for a plan.
We still don’t have a plan.
One of the ideas you have here is a contingency
plan. What if things go awry? What are we going to
do?
We have to have a contingency plan or we should
have a plan going forward. And that way we’d know
where to dedicate our resources. And not just find
ourselves ad hoc doing some ineffective public
awareness campaign at a time when public awareness is
already pretty high and we need to be putting our
resources into the field operations, into the phone
centers, into the ground where it really makes a
difference.
So anyway, I could go on and on. I’m a little
frustrated, little worried, but hopeful that with all
of us working together we can work through this. I’d
just like to get your response to that and what you
think we could do to get a field operation in place
in the short time that we have left that will
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actually be able to get to those who need help on the
ground.
Ms. Berlyn: Commissioner, I think we all
completely share your concerns. And your
recommendations are excellent. We are in the process
of drafting a document that will help outline our
recommendations.
And one thing that you mentioned in terms of a
plan is that we now have 95 days. And so as we get
closer I think the concerns will change. And one
concern I have is that as we get closer to the
transition date there will be households that have
not taken action. And it may be too late for them to
get a coupon in time to get their converter box and
get it installed properly.
And I think if we’re talking about a contingency
plan we should also include in that a plan to provide
some sort of assistance, emergency assistance, at
that point so that we can reach households,
especially in these economic times where every dollar
counts and particularly for low income, fixed income,
the vulnerable groups that the FCC has identified
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that will be of particular concerns. So I think
that’s absolutely a part of, as you mentioned, some
sort of contingency plan. But more seriously focus
on those final couple of weeks.
Commissioner Adelstein: That makes sense, I
think. We found that everything evolves here. That
as we’re moving along we’re learning as we go a
little bit with the new concerns focusing more on the
antenna issues and the converter box set up rather
than just the more generalized awareness.
And the contingency planning is one that we’ve
really got to think about. Do you think we need
legislation for that or do you think we could do it
under current legislation that we have?
Ms. Berlyn: If it involves getting converter
boxes to more households, it may require some
flexibility should we say, in the program? It may
require converter box coupons going first class, for
example, as they’re doing in Hawaii. We may have to
consider that for late requests that they be sent out
first class. And whether or not the budget as it
currently exists can handle that is something that we
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would have to consider.
Ms. Tristani: That’s one issue. We had a
representative from NTIA this morning who said by her
estimate of the unredeemed coupons, these are coupons
that have been delivered, but not used in the 90
days, maybe three million at this point. There are
three million households that cannot use those
coupons. They cannot reapply for coupons. These are
over the air households.
And NTIA’s position or the lawyers at NTIA have
said we can’t interpret the law in any other way.
And the NTIA representative said it’s a practical
matter. She did not see NTIA changing that position.
So that a real, immediate barrier that may not change
until after January 20th unless there’s some re-
thinking at NTIA.
So how do you address that reality of maybe that
number will grow of unredeemed coupons by over the
air households that cannot reapply?
Commissioner Adelstein: Did we know how many of
those are people that really are going to need them?
I mean certainly a certain number of them might have
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been people that were cable households that didn’t
realize --
Ms. Tristani: No, no. These are over the air.
There were 10.4 million coupons total that have not
been redeemed.
Commissioner Adelstein: Oh, those are just over
the air.
Ms. Tristani: So we estimated down to three
million for over the air. These are over the air
already.
Commissioner Adelstein: Wow.
Ms. Berlyn: And that was an estimate provided.
Ms. Tristani: An estimate. It might be higher.
I thought that. I’m giving her the benefit.
Commissioner Adelstein: Well, you know what I
tell people when I’m on the road and they threw these
things in the drawer and they expired or they thought
they could do it later. They didn’t notice the 90
day expiration. That it is totally legal to get one
from a friend or family member that doesn’t need it
because they have cable or satellite. Now you’ve got
to get the word out to those folks, A.
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And B, look at certain communities, Puerto Rico
in particular is a big concern because in Puerto Rico
they went very early. A lot of people applied
because I think there’s, I think, 50 percent of over
the air in Puerto Rico. And they didn’t have any
boxes on the Island at the time apparently or very
few boxes.
Ms. Tristani: They weren’t available.
Commissioner Adelstein: They weren’t available?
So people got these coupons. They’ve expired
because they couldn’t find a box that worked. And
they can’t necessarily go to friend or family member
because half the Island is over the air.
So in certain communities that are all over the
air, they can’t go next door and say, hey you’ve got
satellite could I -- or you’ve got cable could I use
your coupon. I’m extremely concerned about Puerto
Rico in particular where there’s a crisis in one
particular island. But that’s the case in other
areas as well.
Ms. Tristani: But Commissioner it’s not just a
Puerto Rico problem. It’s a problem all over the
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nation. And I think it’s great that to those people
that we can reach and tell them, hey, tell your
neighbor to apply for the coupon.
And how many days do we have that we can apply
without it not getting there on time. But the
reality is that, you know, that’s not going to take
care of the bulk of the problem. So one of my
thoughts was, maybe we’re thinking out loud with the
transition teams that are coming into different
agencies maybe they can help move this along, I don’t
know.
And could we ask you because we asked the
representative of the Consumer Governmental Bureau
that was here. Is there any information on the FCC
transition team or we’re still waiting?
Commissioner Adelstein: I don’t have any.
Ms. Tristani: No, no.
Commissioner Adelstein: I know that there’s a
major concern about DTV.
Ms. Tristani: Yeah, yeah.
Commissioner Adelstein: I mean this is one of
the great focuses --
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Ms. Tristani: No, no. And that’s why because,
you know, obviously we would be going to them as well
individually to help. You know because hopefully
they’ll help.
Commissioner Adelstein: But when we get
information on that we can let you know who to
contact. I don’t have a good source for that right
now.
Ms. Berlyn: Charles?
Mr. Benton: Well, something else that was
mentioned this morning is about the budget. My
understanding is that Congress has appropriated 20
million dollars. I don’t know whether that cash has
flowed or not.
But not only are we in the dark about the plan
that you were referring to. But we don’t know about
the budget that supplements and strengthens the five
million at the FCC and the two and a half million --
I’m sorry, the two and half million at FCC and the
five million at NTIA that was originally for the
consumer education outreach. So what is the story
with the budget? And if the cash has flowed who’s
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responsible for setting priorities and spending that
money?
Commissioner Adelstein: Well the Bureau is
doing that without any input as far as I know. They
haven’t asked for our input as a Commission. The
money was requested based on the recommendation of
the full Commission that some of us here, not to name
any names, really insisted on a higher budget that
was initially proposed. A third of the original
budget would have gone to one little project we’ve
all read about in the paper this morning, if we
hadn’t had our way.
So we really insisted on more money. But it was
fairly open ended as to where we go. And I’m not
exactly sure how much of that was -- is going to be
dedicated to the RFP that was put out.
And I was out in the field when the RFP was
coming due. I think I was in Portland, Oregon. And
they were applying. And I happened to be sitting
around a table with a bunch of community organizers
which is a good thing, I think, no matter what some
might have said.
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[Laughter.]
Commissioner Adelstein: And they were wondering
what to do. They were going to apply. And we tell
them well the deadline, you know, is tomorrow. They
go, ooh. It looks like it’s going to be a late night
for us.
They didn’t know early enough to get this thing
done. They stayed up all night. I’m sure they got
that application in.
Ms. Berlyn: Yeah.
Commissioner Adelstein: But a lot of people
didn’t know about this RFP. I’m not sure exactly
what the priorities are going to be, how much money
is going to allocated for it. I’m glad that we’re
doing it. I think it’s very helpful to help some
communities.
You know Oregon was talking about 150,000
dollars for a phone bank that they needed. That’s
the kind of place we need to put the money. And I
think having localized, decentralized phone banks is
really going to help. Our phone banks can get
overwhelmed.
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And there’s a lot of local issues. It’s
different in every community. Somebody might say I
live in this valley or I live at this address and why
is it I can’t get channel seven.
It’s going to be hard for us to really be up to
speed on that. But these local operations are much
more able. Particularly because when they get a
tough technical question like that somebody might be
able to tap on the shoulder of the local broadcast
engineer and say, what’s the issue here or why am I
getting bad reception there.
I mean a lot of the questions are going to be
about people missing channels or not getting
reception, some of the contours are changing. Trying
to answer those questions out of a federal phone bank
is going to be virtually impossible. So getting
resources to these local initiatives is really
critical.
And I’m not sure exactly what the priorities are
going to be. I need to talk to the Bureau about how
they’re allocating the funding. When they’re
allocating the funding? I’m sorry I can’t enlighten
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you that because I’m just not sure exactly how
they’re doing that.
I’m glad that we’re doing that. And I certainly
didn’t mean to indicate that this was isolated to
Puerto Rico. I just think Puerto Rico is an example
of an extreme case. But all across the country it’s
hard to tell people.
I mean I tell you that just so you know what I
can say as an FCC Commissioner because I don’t have
responsibility for this coupon program. We’re
working with NTIA. But they have some big questions
about all these expired coupons. I didn’t realize it
was up to that many. I’m really worried about it.
Ms. Tristani: I’m equally worried. And of
course I do care about Puerto Rico. But I just
meant, you know, I wanted to make the point that it
is not just a Puerto Rico issue. It’s going to
happen and it’s happening all across the nation.
And there’s a real concern which is not your
jurisdiction, but with the NTIA attitude that it’s
like, it’s not our problem. And you know, the words
were people didn’t take the advantage of the
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opportunity to -- well if the boxes weren’t available
and you had a coupon. There was no opportunity.
Commissioner Adelstein: I know. I’m not sure
that it was clear to everybody there was a 90 day
expiration either.
Ms. Tristani: Exactly.
Commissioner Adelstein: That wasn’t as obvious
to many.
Ms. Pennington: Yes, I work for the Office of
the Peoples’ Council here in DC. And we have had
some people come in and talk about DTV transition to
our staff because we educate consumers. And we’ve
also received telephone calls from consumers who have
gotten the coupons.
And I’m really following up on Gloria’s point of
to have gotten the coupons, went the stores, but the
stores did not have them because during the
Wilmington trial a lot of the boxes were shipped down
to Wilmington in order so that they would be
available for the use during the trial. So it
certainly is not just, you know, a problem that’s
isolated to Puerto Rico. And a lot of the consumers
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also did not know that it was a 90 day expiration
date.
Commissioner Adelstein: Right. I mean, some
people went to the store, they weren’t there. You
know, the 90 day expiration date was something that
Congress did -- put in the law. So they do have some
questions about what the statute permits.
Nevertheless we’re going to have a big problem
as a result of this that we have to have a plan to
deal with. I mean, people are sometimes through no
fault of their own, sometimes they didn’t pay as much
attention. But, you know, that’s how people are.
They don’t know there’s a 90 day, if you don’t tell
them up front.
And then something that I emphasize everywhere I
go but a few of us walking around the country and
saying things at a few town hall meetings is not
going to get to 14 million people that are over the
air that really need this information.
Yes, Karen?
Ms. Peltz Strauss: First of all thank you for
the recent closed captioning order. Because that was
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very, very helpful to have the FCC clarify some of
the obligations of the DTV broadcasters. But for
about two years now we’ve been a broken record here
and visiting the Chairman’s office, visiting the
media bureau, visiting CGB, pleading for technical
help on the problems that have occurred with digital
closed captioning.
It is -- I can’t even begin to tell you. It
would take hours at this point to tell you the number
of problems having to do with the interconnections
between the TVs, cable boxes, DVRs, VCRs, DVDs, the
HDMI cable. The problems are endless.
And we’ve been asking over and over again for
the Commission to set up a technical working group of
engineers from the broadcasting cable, satellite
industries, the consumer electronics industries,
consumers, captioning providers, video description
providers to resolve these problems. We have come in
on a number of occasions. And it’s just not
happening.
And one of the frustrating things is that when
we -- the very, very first meeting that we ever had
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with CGB, we sat down and they actually asked us for
things. They asked us to spread the word to our
community. And we said we’d be happy to, but you
have to understand that even if everybody in our
community knows that they have to go digital on
February 17th. It’s going to be nothing to them if
on February 18th they don’t have their captions.
It’s as good as going dark even if they still have
the picture coming through.
So I’m just renewing this request in the hope
that as the transition, not only the digital
transition, but the Presidential transition takes
place that this actually eventually becomes a
reality.
Commissioner Adelstein: I think it has to. I’m
frustrated we haven’t done more. We did do the order
which was very helpful.
Ms. Peltz Strauss: It was great.
Commissioner Adelstein: But I’m frustrated to
hear that you’re not still getting the technical
assistance that you think you need. And it’s one of
the more tricky areas for people on the ground to be
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able to figure out how to do this.
Ms. Peltz Strauss: Right.
Commissioner Adelstein: This is an example
where we do need a special team along with the
broader field organization to help people walk
through the complexities of making that work because
in the end closed captioning works better on digital.
We know you can --
Ms. Peltz Strauss: When you get it right it’s
amazing.
Commissioner Adelstein: Right.
Ms. Peltz Strauss: And you can control the
font, the color, the size. But if you don’t get it
right, it’s a disaster.
Commissioner Adelstein: And you get nothing.
Either you get much better or nothing.
Ms. Peltz Strauss: Right.
Commissioner Adelstein: But it’s actually
preferable to get something.
Ms. Peltz Strauss: Right.
Commissioner Adelstein: Than to get this
wonderful quality with all the different colors and
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backgrounds and sizes than to get nothing at all.
We’ve got to make sure that we don’t leave behind the
deaf and hard of hearing community. And it’s
particularly important for emergency information when
radio is not a realistic alternative.
Ms. Peltz Strauss: And let me just add, the
blind community as well because even though video
description isn’t required it is still passed
through. It is provided voluntarily. And that also
can, hopefully, eventually, provide information about
emergencies as well because it’s a pending petition
on that as well.
So it’s not only closed captioning. It’s a
bigger problem for closed captioning just because
there is so much content that is now closed captioned
and it’s in danger of being lost. And you know, I’ve
pointed out to NAB that I would think that the NAB or
the Cable Association should be equally concerned
because their clients or your broadcasters are all
paying for this content. And it’s not going to flow
through to the community. But it is a problem, as I
said, for both types of accessibility tools.
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Commissioner Adelstein: And that’s going to be
one of your recommendations I take it, right? I
believe that’s in the draft recommendations.
Ms. Peltz Strauss: Yes.
Commissioner Adelstein: And we absolutely --
well, I’ll do everything that I can to help. I think
that’s really, really a critical area that we should
be doing more on.
Ms. Peltz Strauss: Thank you.
Ms. Berlyn: One other question from Cheryl.
Ms. Heppner: Not really so much a question as
an observation that it’s sometimes very difficult for
people who don’t work with us or represent the deaf
and hard of hearing community to understand the full
impact of not having captioning on television. It’s
rare to ask that it probably hurts anybody else.
It’s our one form of communication.
We can’t listen to radio. We don’t hear public
address systems. When we’re standing in line at a
supermarket, we don’t overhear conversations around
us. So we don’t instinctively pick on the things in
the environment the way anyone else does.
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For our news we really depend on those captions.
For a lot of what people talk about we find it on
television. And if also something that really
changes the fabric of the way we live.
I’ll use an example, personal example. When I
first married my husband was hearing. And we tried
to find things that we could do together as a couple,
movies with caption, TV with caption.
My husband and I both thought it would be fun to
do white water together. We got in canoe. We
started going down the river. And then we realized
we can’t do this. For me to be in the front and for
him to be in the back when he wanted me to paddle on
this side or that side or something, we had no way
for him to communicate and tell me that.
So he ended up having to bang on the side of the
canoe while he’s -- just to get me to turn around.
And I couldn’t really turn around without falling out
or something. And we soon decided, ok. It just was
not going to work for us. We were always finding.
So we tried something else. My husband loves to
fix up old cars, remember this was a long time ago
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back when cars were not run by computers and anybody
could take them apart and put them back together who
had the know how. So he had this lovely little Alfa
that he fixed up. And he thought we’ll do rallies
together as a couple. Ok, sounds like fun.
We got in this bright, red car and we got out to
do a rally. And then I realized with the top down,
the wind blowing. It feels so good to him and me,
it’s like horrible because all I could hear was wind
noise.
So for me to communicate with him I have to look
at him. He’s driving. I only got half of his face
so I can’t really see him, plus there was the wind
blowing my hair in my face the whole time. What are
we going to do?
And we got television captioning. This is
something we can do together. This has just made
such a tremendous difference in our lives and in our
family’s lives.
Thanks for allowing me to share that.
Commissioner Adelstein: Well thank you for
sharing that. I think this is one of the areas that
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you pointed out that shows how acute the need is for
a field operation. You know, for people to get their
hands into somebody’s home and help them walk through
this actually set up.
Some people just aren’t going to be able to do
it on their own. They might have tried to do it
right. And there’s some bug. They don’t know what
went wrong.
And you know trying to do that over the phone is
going to be very difficult for anybody, particularly
those hard of hearing over the devices that you have
to use. It’s tough. Who’s going to do that?
I mean, it’s just I think the most, maybe one of
the most acute cases of the overall need for people
with disabilities, people who are elderly, don’t
speak English, low income, whatever it might be that
they can’t necessarily set this up. There’s a
particular complexity with making sure that the
closed captioning works. But if we don’t have an
overall field operation with a subgroup that’s able
to deal and ensure that closed captioning works on
the array of devices, we’re going to have a problem.
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There’s going to be a huge demand for this. And
you can’t do this in 20, 30 days. I mean we’re
already kind of late to the game. I think we should
have been working on this a long time ago and figure
out exactly what that ground operation is going to
look like. And if we can’t do it, how are we going
to come up with the plan for localities.
One of the things that worked in Wilmington is
getting the fire department to do it. We paid the
fire department to go into people’s homes and set
things up. I happened to be in Portland meeting with
Commissioner Fish, who’s happens to be the Fire
Commissioner in that town. They set it up that way.
And he said, that’s a great idea. I’m going to get
the fire department here in Portland to do this.
But that’s nice I happened to meet with this
person who happened to have that responsibility and
happened to think it was a good idea and is going to
happen to implement it. That’s kind of ad hoc to say
the least. I mean why aren’t we coming up -- what is
the national plan?
Who is going to do this in every community? And
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if it’s not going to be a federal level, what are we
telling the states to do? Who’s going to be there to
do it? What about organizations like yours that can
get some people in the field and AARP and others to
go to the homes of elderly who need help with this
situation?
I think that may be the most acute problem.
Because trying to deal with all of it over the phone
is going to be tough. Some people are going to need
home visits. And they’re going to need some serious
time on the phone to walk through this if they can do
that.
So I hope you make that part of your
recommendations. This is a critical area that we
have to address. And very disappointed we haven’t
done more on.
So thanks for sharing that. And thank you all
for your input on this. I hope we can re-up the CAC
for another two years.
You’ve done a great job. I think we need your
input. We need your help.
And I’m hopeful we can continue to receive it
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going forward over the next couple of years. Thank
you for your service on this. And thanks for your
input on this particular issue.
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you, Commissioner.
[Applause.]
Ms. Berlyn: Ok, group. We have quite a busy
afternoon ahead of us. So we are going to -- yes,
Gloria? You want a recommendation?
We have not -- the drafting group has not
finished our task. I’m glad we listened to the
Commissioner’s remarks. That helps us as well. So
we need some more time to do that.
I’m also sensitive to the fact that we have some
guest speakers who are going to talk as well. So we
need to come up with our plan for the balance of the
afternoon. It is now quarter of.
I would suggest the following. That we go right
to our broadband panel. And that at the conclusion
of that broadband panel the drafting group will meet
and others will take a very short break. And then we
will take up in the time after that, we will take up
the recommendations of both the visibility working
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group as well as the DTV working group.
So that’s our plan. And so with everybody’s
patience and cooperation, I think we can stay on
track and get through the balance of our work. So
now let me turn this over to Brandon Stevens, who is
going to moderate a discussion about broadband.
And, you know, it’s a little break from DTV.
But looking forward to the work that so many people
do around this table, broadband is probably the next
big issue of getting -- is going to get attention in
the next year. So thank you, Brandon for putting
this together.
Mr. Stevens: Well, Madame Chairwoman at the
last meeting you had asked for a little more
information on broadband. And after some discussion
about making recommendations at the last meeting
about the importance of broadband and also adopting
the federal/state joint board for universal service
fund’s recommendations on use of universal service
funds for broadband. I wanted to bring a little more
awareness of the issues of broadband to this
Committee. And I hope that in any kind of re-
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commissioning of this group that we can further
discuss this.
I’ve been working with broadband and fiber
optics and access issues for a number of years, for
the past while working for the Eastern band of
Cherokee Indians. And in times I was not always a
project manager for the tribe, I was an economic
development planner and worked with United States
Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utility Service.
And also during that time the Eastern band of
Cherokee Indians also developed an LLC to build fiber
optics into our region.
I have invited today, first of all Jonathan
Claffey, who works with the USDA. And also works
with what is the Rural Connect Program under Ken
Kushner. And he’s going to speak first.
But just to talk about some of the issues in
rural America. Some of the things, not only some of
the agencies like Department of Commerce, working
with, but how they’re dealing with broadband and
access in rural areas. I think we’ll also see that
it’s not just a matter of getting access.
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But, you know, some of the things that are the
barriers there may be definitions of what broadband
access is and how that’s working through. But Mr.
Claffey, you have the floor now. We appreciate you
spending some of your valuable time with us this
afternoon.
Mr. Claffey: Well, thank you all very much.
Thank you for having me. I appreciate the
opportunity to come and speak with you all about the
USDA programs and the works that we’re doing in rural
development because we think it’s important and we
think it’s having a real impact. But we recognize
that we’ve got quite a few spaces to fill in as well.
I’d like to start out by maybe giving you a
little bit of background about why the Department of
Agriculture is here talking to you about broadband
deployment. Maybe put our programs in context for
you with regard to what it is we’re doing.
Within USDA I work for an organization which is
now Rural Development. Rural Development consists of
three sister agencies of which I work in the
Utilities Program which is the predecessor to the old
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REA programs. It started Rural Electrification
Telecommunications Financing back to get power to the
farms and then followed by phone service.
Those programs have evolved and today are very
much a part of the rural development and economic
drive engine to promote just a better quality of life
in rural America. The other two just by way of
mention, the sister programs are Rural Business
Programs and our Rural Housing Programs. So you can
see between the three agencies they really encompass
a one-stop shop for financing of rural ventures,
rural towns and rural communities.
In fact one of our former colleagues used to say
that rural development is one agency that could
actually build a town from the ground up because it
would be able to finance the infrastructure needs,
water, sewer and power as well as business and
communications needs through our business programs
and our telecommunications programs and housing
through our housing program. So it is an all
encompassing tool now that has evolved for rural
America. And it’s administered, of course, under the
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USDA’s Rural Development Programs.
Within the -- and the main reason for me being
here today within the Utilities Program. I have
worked for the Telecommunications Program. I am the
Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Utilities
Programs, Telecommunications Programs.
I’ve actually been with the same agency, RD, for
about 21 and a half years. I started in 1987. So
I’m a career employee who’s had a long career with
rural development issues and financing initiatives
that go a long way towards bettering the life in
rural communities. And really helping them transform
and you’ll hear me use that word several more times,
our rural communities from agricultural based
economies into much more than that. And the
Telecommunications Program has very strong financing
tools available to it for providing financing for
rural broadband deployment.
Historically and continuing today we’ve had our
-- what we refer to as an infrastructure program
which typically lends about 690 to 700 million
dollars a year for -- to local exchange carriers
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providing telecommunications and broadband services.
These are your independent LECs that have been
clients of the old REA and the RUS and rural
development for 10, 20, 30, 40 years now. They’re
very progressive companies.
Complementary to that in 2002, the Farm Bill
introduced a new program to us in terms of broadband,
specifically broadband deployment. And it allowed us
to actually make loans in areas that we were
traditionally prohibited from making loans before in
areas that may already have providers, hence we would
be funding areas where there may be some competition.
But also increase the parameters of where we could go
in terms of the size of the towns.
Our traditional programs were limited to very
small areas, towns of 5,000 or less and the outlying
areas. And of course the new Broadband Program
allowed us to go into towns of up to 20,000 in
population. That program traditionally has had
around a half a billion dollars worth of lending
authority associated with it. And the two programs
combined have put out almost 700 billion dollars
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since 2001 in loans for broadband deployment in rural
areas.
We have some other programs that we’re working
that help us to -- they’re tools of ours that help
both in terms of broadband deployment and building
off of what you get out of having a broadband
infrastructure in place. One of those is our Distant
Learning and Telemedicine Loaning and Grant Program.
You may be familiar with that.
But of course you need broadband infrastructure
in place in order to really take advantage of a
program like this. That program is a very successful
grant program on one side. The loan program has been
a little less successful in terms of finding a
business model where schools, libraries or even
health care providers can support that financing.
But in a nutshell on the loan side, or on the
grant side, it’s an equipment based program that
makes grants available for schools, healthcare
clinics, libraries, any educational type of facility,
K through 12, universities, community colleges, rural
health clinics to receive the equipment that enables
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them to use a telemedicine or a distance learning
service. So we have that program. It’s annually
funded at around 25 to 30 million dollars. It’s a
competitive grant program.
We have another smaller grant program which we
call our Community Connect Grant Program which it’s a
broadband based program whereby a single community
can put in an application that does not have
broadband service available to it. And we could make
a grant that actually provides the funding to put the
infrastructure in place. And then there are some
parameters that we want the grantee to agree to and
build their system to.
Number one, connect every critical facility
within the town and offer them -- and give them free
broadband service for two years. Critical facilities
we’ve sort of defined as police station, fire houses,
the Town Hall, hospitals, schools, etc. What you
would consider those types of facilities that you
need to operate safely and you need to operate for
community.
We also would require them to put a community
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center in place. They could either build one or if
they had space available, designate that space
whereby at least ten computers are put in there,
connected to the internet, open to the public free of
charge, operated for two years so that those
residents that didn’t have computers in their homes
or couldn’t afford the service there, could go and
experience what it really was that broadband was
bringing to them, how they could use this new tool.
Again that would be operated for two years and we
could fund the cost there.
The real core of this program is to get funding
into the areas that simply could not be supported by
either private investment which is obvious in a lot
of these very small towns or even by government
subsidized, lower interest loan investments. So we
were operating this grant program. It’s highly
competitive.
And as I said it’s not an enormous amount of
funding. It’s around 10 million dollars a year in
that program. So you can see that we’re certainly
over subscribed there.
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When we talk about some of the challenges for
rural deployment, you all know this in terms of
costs. It costs a lot more to do almost everything
in rural areas. And we’re dealing with an industry
that is a mix, as you well know, of partially
regulated areas and non-regulated areas. And
entities who are now competing against one another
who have different sets of rules that they must
follow.
Within our broadband program, the new one
introduced by the Farm Bill and then just
reauthorized by the 2008 Farm Bill. We recognize
these challenges that we’re going to be financing in
areas where you need to leverage some of the more
lucrative areas. If you will, lower cost to serve,
higher use areas, in order to expand that donut out
and get to those areas that are un-served. That’s
one major challenge for us.
And I know I’m going to be a little short on
time here, but what I would like to do is also bring
up a few of the provisions that we’re going to be
faced with here because the new Farm Bill changed our
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statute. And we’re currently rewriting our rules and
regulations. And there are several important
components to that that we’re going to have to deal
with which will change the landscape under which
we’re able to lend into.
The previous Farm Bill allowed us to --
virtually the criteria was a town of 20,000 or less
and under and you could go into that area. Now it
might not be feasible and we might not make the loan.
But it didn’t matter how many different competitors
were there at the time that they’ve submitted an
application. All they had to do was meet the
morality requirement, if you will.
The new statute requires us to -- it prohibits
financing where essentially the market is already
taking care of the situation. And it’s defining that
as there are three or more incumbent service
providers already say, within a proposed service
territory. We wouldn’t put a fourth one funded by
the government into that area.
It also requires applicants to bring within a
proposed service territory that they’re submitting to
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us a level of at least 25 percent of households
within that territory that do not have access or have
access to broadband by only one provider. So those
two parameters as you can see right there will change
the landscape under which we make loans. They are
not completely foreign ideas to us because we had
actually proposed something similar when we tried to
rewrite the rules before the Farm Bill started its
deliberations. And we put that on hiatus for obvious
reasons because the statute was about to change.
But the goal there, the real goal there is to
incent companies and other entities to extend service
to underserved and un-served areas. And then also
not to put federal dollars where the market has
already adequately provided competition which drives,
you know, obviously quality and price issues. I
wanted to mention those new parameters.
We’re on a fast track, I believe. We think we
can get an interim rule out by the end of the
calendar year that would allow us to start accepting
applications back in that program.
I guess in closing, you know, rural America is
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our charge here in rural development. You can tell
from just the brief mention of our programs we’re
focused in almost every aspect, rural business
incentives, infrastructure. We actually have a --
it’s a fairly easy graphic to visualize.
A graphic that we usually use in a power point
presentation is a pyramid. And within that pyramid
it shows all of the different rural development
programs. As you build on community leadership and
your infrastructure, safe and clean drinking water,
reliable electricity and affordable electricity,
broadband communications.
Add your business programs that can now -- we’ve
got numerous success stories of businesses that can
be anywhere. Broadband is transformative. It allows
economic development, as you well know. And it will
be the mechanism much like and it’s a cliché I know,
much like the canals and the waterways, the
interstate highways, the railroads. It will be that
mechanism that allows us to essentially prosper
wherever we want to live.
So I appreciate your time. And I certainly, I
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would be happy even to give you my phone number if
you would like follow ups with me and would like to
arrange a meeting to, you know, come or have a
conference call and learn more about our programs and
what they can do in rural areas. It’s 202-720-9556.
And again my name is John Claffey. And I
appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today.
Mr. Stevens: I’m going to lead off with one
question for you. In the past couple of years how
much saturation do you think, whether it’s been fiber
optics or wireless or -- how well has broadband
access getting into America -- how many portions of
the country are you’re seeing that have no access or
dial up verses those that are beginning to see some
saturation there? I mean, is there a lot of work
left to go as far as the un-served area verses those
areas that are underserved?
Mr. Claffey: Yeah, I believe there’s a lot of
-- if I had the exact statistic that you just asked
for I think I could sell it to somebody. There are
so many variables in the question you just asked. I
believe there’s a lot of work to be done because I
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believe that the demand for bandwidth is going to be
going up. It’s not set at a static level.
By virtue of the fact that we have a community
connect grant program that’s well over subscribed,
that’s proof right there that there are plenty of
areas that -- and that program relies on our
definition that we still have not changed as we --
when we adopted our rules in 2003 that broadband was
defined as 200 kilobits per second in each direction,
fairly low level by today’s standards. So we see,
you know, 50, 60, 70 towns applying every year for
that program who don’t even have those speeds
available. I think it is critical where the
definition level gets set. But I think we’re going
to be chasing this for a while in terms of getting
broadband out to the most rural communities.
Towns and more densely populated areas are
seeing one, to two, to three competitors already.
But pushing that envelope out further I think is our
real challenge. And I think that’s when I spoke
somewhat of we need to be open to some amount of
competitive financing in terms of that it will
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leverage a company’s ability to say, if you let me
have some of this market. I can go to the market
that’s un-served. And I think there’s a lot of that
market still left.
Mr. Stevens: Any other questions for Mr.
Claffey? Or comments?
Ms. Tristani: The loans or the grants generally
are they available for public entities as well or?
Mr. Claffey: Yes. You know the short answer is
essentially only individuals or partnerships are
ineligible. For profit, not for profit, co-op,
corporations, municipalities, they are eligible.
They need to be incorporated in such a way that
they’re able to legally contract with the government,
execute loan security agreements, mortgages, notes,
loan contracts, etc. But yes.
Ms. Tristani: The other question is on the
speed definition of broadband of which the FCC only
recently updated as well. Are you looking at
updating that definition?
Mr. Claffey: Well certainly the Farm Bill
directs the Secretary. And of course that authority
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is delegated down to the Administrator of the
Utilities Programs to look at that. And I think, you
know, it’s been -- we’re redoing our rules and
regulations since 2003. So I would imagine, yes, we
would be looking at updating that as well.
Ms. Tristani: Thanks. Thank you.
Mr. Stevens: Any other questions for Mr.
Claffey?
Mr. Claffey, I appreciate your time being here.
And I hope that some of the folks walk away with a
little information or at least a contact now to gain
some resources for USDA or some of the other things
that are just kind of outside the box for accessing
broadband. But we appreciate your time, sir.
Mr. Claffey: Well, thank you. And you’re very
welcome. And please, if you would like to contact
me, that’s why I gave you the phone number and we can
talk more about our programs because we think they’re
important. Thank you again.
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you.
Mr. Stevens: About five years ago Western North
Carolina experienced some black outs. I think I may
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have told this story to this group before that we had
some cut offs with telecommunications. We suddenly
found out that there were not a lot of areas for
upstream egress or points of dial tone service even.
And on two separate Fridays a seven to eight
county region was put into the black which relies
heavily on tourism. So that means ATMs, fax
machines, internet, all kinds of critical
infrastructure was cut off. And it was primarily at
the hand of someone who was digging a ditch one
weekend. The next weekend someone just putting in
some infrastructure that cut the lines.
And through the whole region we were in the
dark, which prompted us to talk to the incumbent
carriers for expanding their infrastructure, building
more points of egress. And at that point little
rural areas including our Cherokee Indian reservation
did not have a population to serve to allow that
company to expand for return on investment and that
sort of thing.
So it prompted the Eastern band of Cherokee
Indians and Drake Enterprises, whom David Hubbs is an
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employee of. But Drake Enterprises what I have to
tell you, is also one of the founding fathers of
software that makes it possible for us to
electronically file income taxes. Some of the -- so
at that point infrastructure such as broadband, fiber
optics, T1 lines, were very important to this
company.
And as a point of us needing infrastructure for
hospitals, communications, the two merged as an LLC
called Balsam West Fibernet. There is a strand of
mountains in West North Carolina called the Balsam
Mountains. So west of that area is where we’re
having some trouble with telecommunications. We
created this LLC and combined resources to build over
300 miles of fiber optics to serve the area. This
helped with access in all different levels.
David is here to tell us about some of the
activities of one, the challenges of rural areas and
the need for broadband and also some of the things
that we’ve encountered. And now some of the success
stories of where Balsam West Fibernet is going.
So, David? Mr. David Hubbs is our CEO of Balsam
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West Fibernet.
Mr. Hubbs: Thank you, Brandon. I was just
marking out lines on my paper. You stole all my
material. But I think I can make due.
Thank you for having me here. Brandon asked me
to come and talk about who we are and what we’ve done
and why we did it and what we think it means and to
do all that in ten minutes. So I’m going to give
that my best shot.
As Brandon said Balsam West is a regional, fiber
optic network in rural, Western North Carolina. The
particulars of the 300 miles that we installed, we
put it in all underground. We are in the six western
most counties of the state including the tribal lands
of the Eastern band of Cherokee as well as a sliver
of East Tennessee and North Georgia. Rural
communities all.
I don’t think there are any of those counties
with very large populations. I think the populations
range from 15,000 to a max of 29,000. We have tried
to touch every ‘burg and ‘ville in the region that we
serve.
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So that’s a little bit about what we’ve done.
And there’s more that we have done. But before I get
on to that I think it’ll make more sense if I explain
why we did it.
And Brandon explained a little bit of that. But
I’ll just kind of address it from the Drake
Enterprises. What we saw.
Drake is a small company. It’s large in the
standards of our region. We have about 500
employees. We’re actually a family of several small
companies all working together.
But the largest of those companies is Drake
Software. And Drake creates software to calculate,
print and electronically file Federal and State
income tax returns. It’s very glamorous work.
And we -- Phil Drake, our founder, was actually
a pioneer in the early days of trying to develop
software and systems to transmit information to the
IRS. And it’s not rocket surgery to figure out that
they would a lot rather have information
electronically that they can access rather than
warehouses and warehouses full of paper. So in the
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80s that began to take hold as a method of filing
information with the IRS and at that time it was
pretty much a modem to modem telephone call. You
dial a number, transmit the data and hang up.
Then in the 90s as the Internet began to become
ubiquitous. We realized that our income tax filing
software had to evolve to take advantage of the
Internet. But here we were in a small town in
Franklin, North Carolina in late 1994. And there
were no Internet service providers. There was no one
we could call and say, we need a circuit. There was
no dial up, no nothing.
So we had to remain competitive in our industry.
So we negotiated directly with the backbone provider
and got Internet service over a long haul transport
directly to us out of Atlanta. And that cost us
about six to ten times what it would have cost were
we in an urban area. So we had a little bit of extra
cost there.
As the 90s bore on our dependence on the
Internet in order to conduct our business became
greater and greater and greater. We recognized a
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necessity by the late 90s of becoming multi-home.
And what that meant to us was that we were going to
buy two circuits to the Internet. We bought one to
Atlanta and one to Greensboro, North Carolina. And
we did that so that we would be protected in the
event a circuit went down we wouldn’t be out of
business. We’d be able to continue to transmit.
What we learned the hard way is that our region
had another disadvantage besides the last mile. Our
disadvantage was the middle mile. We learned the
hard way and Brandon mentioned those outages.
In 2002 a single pipe with a cable in it that
served our entire region went down eight times. And
so it didn’t just affect our business. It affected
every home, bank, credit union, business of any kind,
hospitals, schools, everybody. And of course it
affected our business. And we needed to solve that
problem if we were going to remain competitive in our
field.
So we contacted the bank loan provider and asked
about how could we get some geographical diversity on
those two circuits. And they couldn’t find any
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infrastructure that could fill that need. So we
talked to the incumbent, local carrier. And we
explained what the situation was. And our demand was
not great enough to warrant an investment on their
part.
So we were basically left with two choices.
We’re either going to move our company or we’re going
to build. And either one of which is going to be
very expensive.
And so we decided if we were going to have to
spend a lot of money to solve this problem anyway,
why not invest it in our own hometown. Fortunately
we have a very active community college system. We
have a very good relationship with the Eastern band
of Cherokee Indians.
They also were suffering from the same kind of
middle mile problem as us. And so by working
together and using information that Southwestern
Community College had learned in some studies that
they had done, we began to plot and scheme as to how
we could solve this problem and build for ourselves.
So we built this ring.
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We, in essence we solved our geographical
diversity problems. We built our regional network.
We made arrangements with an adjacent regional
network and negotiated our own transport all the way
to Atlanta that’s completely geographically diverse
than what the incumbent telephone company has. And
we were working, are working on other relationships
like that.
Additionally we have worked with the medical
community, the school systems. We have now connected
45 school buildings in the six western most counties
with their own fiber optic cable to each building.
There are more schools to be done, but we’ve done 45
schools so far.
We have been working with the medical community.
We’ve connected together the West Care Medical
Systems. They have five different facilities in
different towns around the area.
We have also worked with banks, insurance
companies, municipal governments, county governments
as well as some other carriers we’re beginning to
work with now. So we have, you know, tried to do the
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work to address another problem besides the last mile
that can affect rural communities. And what we
realized -- I grew up in a small town and perhaps
some of you did. And we realized that when it comes
to telecommunications technology, the small towns get
it last. We always get it last.
And that only makes sense. I mean you have to
have a certain amount of population in order to
warrant the investment in some technologies. And I
think that’s a perfectly appropriate approach for a
20th century to build for demand.
But in North Carolina, as you know, and in many
other rural areas we have had a mass exodus of
manufacturing jobs, as well as agricultural jobs and
so forth. So we needed a new strategy to try to make
ourselves suitable and attractive for the 21st
century economy. In order to attract knowledge
based, technology companies to our area, either to
grow them or attract them there, we needed to have
the infrastructure that they need to have.
So I don’t even know how long I’ve been talking.
But we are beginning to work on some other ways to
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bring in some other revenue streams and try to bring
the flow of dollars in terms of using
telecommunication infrastructure into our region
rather than having it flow out. And so we’re just
trying to do a little bit of our part with that.
And I am aware that there is a couple of pilot
programs out there. I think the FCC has a pilot
program for medical connectivity. We are trying --
we are not applying for a grant, but we’re trying to
work with the medical community in our area to see if
that would be attractive to them. Because we would
like to be their vendor, you know.
And but at the same time there’s some other
potentialities. I think the schools could certainly
-- they’re in pursuit of more grant dollars to try to
continue to get connectivity for all of their
buildings as well. Thank you.
Mr. Stevens: And one other thing before we open
up questions. One of the avenues that this whole
fiber optic ring has built in for Western North
Carolina has been efficiency. Because in Western
North Carolina, on the map, you may be able to draw a
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point from city to city and it looks as we say as the
crow flies couple miles in between cities. But the
roads are single lanes, switchback roads that take
literally hours to go back and forth.
What this has created is created a virtual
community that has no barriers. In other words, the
local hospitals and communities have been able to
treat patients, telemedicine basis or to transmit
large amounts of data such as imaging for cancer
patients, people who have severe illnesses to major
cities, Knoxville, Atlanta, Asheville, and beyond
even to cities around the world to gain diagnosis.
It’s also helped our educational areas.
But this has reduced the time lag traveling in
between the cities. Also, for us there’s not a lot
of areas to take a look at business industry, I’ll
say it that way, industry that could potentially
pollute the mountains or anything like that. It’s
given us an avenue to build clean industry, software
based, call centers and especially to some areas that
don’t have a labor force that has a high level of
education, but has created economic opportunities.
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So there in lies the importance of why broadband
is important, especially to rural areas. So,
questions for Mr. Hubbs?
I made that kind of impression? Now also --
Mr. Hubbs: Is that good or bad?
Mr. Stevens: I don’t know. Let’s see. Marty,
you had an announcement or can you tell us about --
because there’s a broadband summit or sort coming up
so --
Ms. Doneghy: I was just talking to Brandon
during one of the breaks and mentioning something
that was written up in I guess Com Daily or one of
the daily broadcasting magazines about a national
broadband summit happening December 2nd in the Senate
Commerce Science and Transportation hearing room.
And the name that I had from the article was a Jeff
Baller with a group. They’re calling themselves --
Ms. Berlyn: Jim.
Ms. Doneghy: Jim Baller, ok. Calling
themselves the National Broadband Coalition Group.
And it sounds like from the article they’re opening
themselves up to everyone. I thought it was
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significant because if you can get the Senate
Commerce hearing room, that’s pretty good.
I know that that Committee has done quite a few
hearings on why broadband matters since September.
And I think that activity is going to continue in the
next Congress. I was just throwing it out.
Mr. Stevens: If no other questions. Ok, I’m
sorry, Scott?
Mr. Doron: I guess I had a story and then a
question. And it’s easy sitting here in DC thinking
that the word is out on the importance of broadband.
Especially to rural communities, this is not the
case.
Two years ago through a grant from the Delta
regional authority, we interviewed city managers or
county managers, whoever would have been responsible
for telecommunications issues within the county. We
found out that more often that not, nobody was
responsible. And that these county managers or city
managers had telecommunications very far down on
their list of priorities. One comment was how can I
worry about that when I don’t even have clean water?
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So there are issues like that.
But one thing I found very interesting about,
you know, the discussion is role of state policy
investments in this area. If you look at, at least
the public pronouncements of state investments, at
least the ones that I’m familiar with, North Carolina
and Kentucky, through ENC and Connect Kentucky,
appear to be the leaders or models for state
investments in this with Tennessee then kind of
glomming on to the Connect Kentucky model. But you
didn’t mention the state assistance at all or --
Mr. Hubbs: We didn’t get any.
Mr. Doron: Ok. What does --
Mr. Hubbs: But we work with ENC.
Mr. Doron: Ok. You didn’t get any because you
weren’t eligible or what were the issues there that
I’m missing?
Mr. Hubbs: Well, we tried to get something but
we didn’t. And maybe we just didn’t do a good job of
identifying exactly what the problem was that we were
trying to address. And we’ve learned a lot in the
process as well.
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But every step of the way, you know, it has --
our intuitions about it have been correct. We did
fill a very serious gap in the middle mile. ENC was
primarily interested in the last mile, you know.
And they’ve done some remarkable work getting
local telephone companies to purchase what we call D
slams, DSL switches, so they can provide DSL service
and that sort of thing. And the Kentucky program,
Kentucky Datalink is remarkable. They have
interconnected with a lot of other regional
infrastructure.
But we were -- a lot of the state project was
funding to help fill around holes. But we had a
square hole that we were, round pegs in square holes.
We recognized a different problem. And we have the
last mile problem in our area too. And we’re doing
some things to address that.
And we’re trying to encourage service providers
to come in, that, you know, we can help deliver their
services. We’re going to try to deliver some
services ourselves, voice and so forth and perhaps
video at some point in time. But mainly we’re just a
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transport provider.
And we’ve tried to give our region another
connection to the outside world because the incumbent
world -- our need was not warranting any action on
their part. So there’s a little bit of difference
than in what we’ve done and what the state was trying
to accomplish. But we were working with the state.
We’re now helping to provide our schools
connectivity to a state project called NCREN where
each of the county school systems has a dedicated
connection back to the state infrastructure. And
we’re part of that.
Ms. Berlyn: Charles?
Mr. Benton: Yeah. This is not a question, but
let me just add a couple of observations here. In
North Carolina, really is a model in state leadership
and beyond Kentucky and connect the nation, I mean
Jane Patterson and all those great folks.
And picking up Marty on your comment. Jim
Baller has been working as a consultant for a long
time in North Carolina. And a lot of his content in
the national broadband strategy flows out of that
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relationship with E North Carolina. And that is an
open meeting on the Hill on December 2nd between 10
and 12. And those interested in a national broadband
strategy should come. I mean, it will be a very
interesting meeting.
You’re signed up on this, Rich and a whole bunch
of other people too. So it’s -- Jim has really done
us all a service in trying to push forward finding
common ground on a national broadband strategy. So,
very exciting. Marty, I’m glad you raised that.
Mr. Stevens: Any more questions for Mr. Hubbs?
David, appreciate your time. And what we hope
to do is just to bring a little more education.
There’s not a whole lot more to do with broadband as
far as our work as a CAC here in this particular
session.
What we did do, I know the overshadowing theme
here was the additional transition in television.
But along the way we hope to raise a few issues and
some awareness of what broadband can do and the
importance of that. And I’d like to thank all the
people who worked in the working group with us.
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Charles Benton, you’ve been a great help and
you’ve been a great resource and a great leader with
our group. And all the people who worked with us,
spending some time on conference calls and that sort
of thing, I really appreciate your time and your
efforts there. And this is a big issue, obviously to
me and also to some of the constituency I represent.
But I thank you for your time and Chairman?
Ms. Berlyn: Yeah. Thank you very much,
Brandon. And it’s a different subject than what
we’ve dealt with all day here, digital television,
but I see it as a, sort of, a bridge issue because
certainly the next CAC will most certainly be looking
at this issue. So you hope to prepare folks who may
be involved in the next one a bit today. So thank
you very much.
Ok, it’s a -- we’re right on time for our plan
here. I’m going to ask the subcommittee of drafters
to get together. I think we just need five or ten
minutes.
And everyone else, please take a break. And
then we’ll get back and start to look at some of the
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recommendations. Thanks.
[Break.]
Ms. Berlyn: We need to get reconvened.
There might be a few folks out. Let me go get
the people out in the hallway.
Thank you everyone. Patience, I appreciate it.
Ok, so we have on our agenda.
We still have left -- yeah, we’re not making the
agenda as it currently exists in front of you. But
we will get everything done that needs to happen
today. And I anticipate that we won’t have comments
from the public seeing I don’t see a public around.
Alright, we’ve worked on changes and
recommendations for our DTV --
Mr. Benton: I’ve got to go, but I’ve just got
want to do one thing. I can’t resist doing one
thing.
Ms. Berlyn: Right. I think you need to raise
your hand.
Mr. Benton: I would like to put in a resolution
of recognition to Scott Marshall of his service.
Mr. Marshall: You’re out of order.
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Ms. Berlyn: Hear, hear.
Mr. Marshall: You’re out of order.
Mr. Benton: Service not only to this CAC, but
prior CACs were wonderfully served by this dedicated
public servant. And I just wanted to, you know, put
in a message that ought to be part of the official
record as we wind down this two year term of the CAC.
Male Speaker: Second that.
[Applause.]
Ms. Berlyn: Well done, Charles.
Mr. Marshall: Thank you, Charles. Thank you
everyone.
Ms. Berlyn: We could not do what we do without
Scott that’s for sure. So thank you. And my only
regret is that we didn’t do it this morning in front
of others from the FCC.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Berlyn: So they know what a faithful public
servant he is.
Ms. Tristani: This is on the record.
Ms. Berlyn: This is on the record. And it’s a
unanimous number 14.
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Mr. Marshall: We’re still working. And it’s on
the record. Yes.
Ms. Berlyn: We’ve had several recommendations
for number 14. Ok. Alright.
So we are now in the recommendations of both the
Disability Working Group and the DTV Working Group.
And if I could indulge everyone, if you don’t mind if
I do the DTV one first seeing the scribbles on here
are incredible. And I want to make sure that we have
a fresh -- a correct version here.
We did several things when we did our drafting.
We tried to reflect the discussion that we had over
lunch as well as some of the comments that
Commissioner Adelstein made to the working group.
And then we also looked at reordering some of these
so it made some sense for this CAC’s recommendations
as opposed to the Commissioner Copps’s letter
originally in which we’ve used and done quite a bit
of changes to.
So help me if you could, Drafting Group. But
let me just start out by saying that the first one on
this recommendation is a ramp up of the FCC call
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center. And we added, “And other direct consumer
assistance.” So that will be our first point.
This is instead of -- you see number three on
here is now going to be number one. And in the
second paragraph we added the following. It now
reads “For consumers who need more hands on
assistance the Commission should” and we add here,
“provide resources to facilitate” -- wait, I’m sorry.
“Should provide resources to and facilitate the
development of local partnerships.” Ok. So commas
are important here.
Ok. So that now becomes number one. Number two
is your old number four. And here we say -- oh, I’m
sorry. Do we have another -- the Committee
recommendation to establish a specific channel is
that under the new number one?
Ok, so we have another addition to the new
number one which goes as following. “The Committee
also recommends that the FCC establish a specific
channel of communication to respond to issues related
to closed captioning including, but not limited to
email address and TTY line.”
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Mr. Marshall: It will be closed caption and
video description.
Ms. Berlyn: And video description. Ok. And
then the parenthesis comes after video?
Mr. Marshall: Correct.
Ms. Berlyn: Ok. And dedicated voice line.
Mr. Marshall: Voice line, yeah.
Ms. Berlyn: Got it. Ok. Alright.
So that’s the new number one. All of that is
the new number one.
Now the new number two is “prepare comprehensive
DTV” -- I’m sorry, “DTV contingency plans. The
Commission and the NTIA should jointly” and then we
have three bullet points. The first two the same and
a third bullet point says, “Address issues related to
the renewal, expiration and late distribution of
converter box coupons.” Ok, so that’s the new number
two.
The new number three is the old number one which
now says, “Conduct additional field testing.” And I
don’t think we include it in the title here. And
soft cut offs. That should be the header. And then
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underneath it, it says, “The Commission should
encourage more soft cut offs by broadcasters and to
the extent practicable, conduct field tests in
various markets, etc.” Ok? So that’s the new number
three.
The new number four is the old number six. The
header is the same on number four. The title there,
the paragraph underneath reads, “The Commission
should continually refine and disseminate trouble
shooting checklists.”
So that was a recognition that the FCC currently
has a trouble shooting document. So we just want
them to continue that effort to update it. Ok.
Number, the new --
Mr. Ellis: In the examples.
Female speaker: In the titles.
Ms. Berlyn: Oh, in the examples. Right. We,
where it says antenna functionality, closed
captioning, and the digital cliff effect, in that
paragraph.
Ok. The new number five is the old number ten.
“Convene a working group on Digital Closed Captioning
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and Video Description.”
Ms. Peltz Strauss: Technical, technical.
Ms. Berlyn: Oh, that’s in the header. Ok.
“Convene a technical working group on Digital Closed
Captioning and Video Description.” And underneath it
will read, “The Commission should convene a technical
working group on Closed Captioning and Video
Description that includes representatives from the
broadcast cable and satellite industries, consumer
electronics, manufacturers and retailers and
providers of consumers -- “
Ms. Peltz Strauss: And providers and consumers
of captioning.
Ms. Berlyn: “And providers and consumers of
captioning and video description.”
Ms. Peltz Strauss: Right.
Ms. Berlyn: And then under the second bullet we
added video description. So it’s “Evaluate the
captioning and video description capabilities of
digital equipment.”
Ms. Peltz Strauss: And actually we missed one
under the first bullet as well. “Identify current
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and anticipate problems with the transmission and
display of digital captioning and of video
description.”
Ms. Berlyn: Ok. Ok. Now, next, the new number
six is the old number two. And we did not make any
changes to that.
The new number seven is the old number nine.
And we did not make any changes to that.
The new number eight is the old number five.
And we did not make any changes to that.
The new number nine is the old number eight.
“Encourage the rapid deployment of small battery-
operated DTV sets.” Underneath that we have a
paragraph that now reads, “The Commission should
encourage the development of small, battery-powered,
fully accessible,” and in parenthesis, “(captioning
and video description), DTV sets and converter boxes
and work with industry to ensure that these products
are widely available in the market in sufficient
numbers.”
Jamie?
Mr. Hedlund: I just got more information.
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There are -- under 13, battery-powered, portable sets
under 13 inches that are available that include
closed captioning circuitry. There are models that
are already out there.
Ms. Berlyn: Excellent, excellent. Would you
recommend any amendment to this then? Cause we do
say, “Should encourage?” Should we say, continue to
encourage?
Would you recommend any?
Mr. Hedlund: I wouldn’t recommend edit. I mean
the market. We would say that the market is
responding, but --
Ms. Berlyn: Ok. Ok, thank you. Ok, now, the
new number ten is the old number seven.
The new number -- ok. So that’s -- those are
all the old bullets. We added three more.
Number eleven reads, “The Commission should
ensure the accountability and transparency of all
public funding related to the DTV transition.”
The new number twelve, “The Commission should
recommend that Congress investigate opportunities to
facilitate the goals of the DTV transition using
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appropriate financial resources.”
Ms. Kalani: Could you repeat that?
Ms. Berlyn: The Commission should recommend
that Congress investigate opportunities to facilitate
the goals of the DTV transition using appropriate
financial resources.
And the new thirteen is, “The Commission should
work closely with the Presidential transition team to
ensure a seamless, efficient and effective DTV
transition effort.”
And that is it. Although there’ve been several
recommendations for a fourteen. We are keeping it to
thirteen.
Ms. Kalani: Could you repeat that?
Ms. Berlyn: Sure. Number eleven is “The
Commission should ensure the accountability and
transparency of all public funding related to the DTV
transition.”
Ms. Kalani: Thank you.
Ms. Berlyn: That is the recommendation of the
DTV Working Group. Does someone want to move it
forward?
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Mr. Stevens: So moved.
Ms. Berlyn: Ok.
Ms. Peltz Strauss: Second.
Ms. Berlyn: Ok. Brandon moves. Karen second.
Further discussion?
Alright. All those in favor of this
recommendation indicate by saying “Aye.”
[A chorus of ayes.]
Ms. Berlyn: Any opposed?
[No response.]
Ms. Berlyn: Claude, you were an aye. Was
Claude an aye? I saw his hand up.
Female Speaker: Yes.
Ms. Berlyn: Ok, thank you. Any --
Mr. Marshall: Abstentions.
Ms. Berlyn: Abstentions, thank you. Anyone
abstaining?
One, two, three, four. Ok, four abstentions.
Mr. Marshall: Do they want to be named on the
record or just four abstentions?
Ms. Berlyn: Do you need to be named?
Abstentions? No.
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Mr. Marshall: No? Ok, thank you.
Ms. Berlyn: I’m fine with that.
Mr. Marshall: And if it would be helpful we
could ask our reporter to do a rush delivery on this
section of the transcript. Would that help you in
putting this together?
Ms. Berlyn: Oh, that would be great. Yeah,
that would be great.
Mr. Marshall: Linda Metcalf, if that’s
possible?
Ms. Metcalf: [off mic]
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you.
Mr. Marshall: Just this section now. I don’t
want to go into bankruptcy.
Ms. Metcalf: I’ll pass that along.
Mr. Marshall: I might have to rely on the
stimulus package.
Ms. Berlyn: Ok, great. Thank you.
Mr. Marshall: Thank you.
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you DTV Working Group. That
was great, quick work. Disability Working Group, do
you have a recommendation to make for action today?
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Cheryl?
Ms. Heppner: Eric and I, as Co-chairs of this
work group are going to rotate with each other.
Eric and I started by giving thanks for the FCC
for hosting the meeting specifically for deaf and
hard of hearing persons in the Wilmington area on the
digital television transition. Claude Stout and Lisa
Hamilton were there along with staff of the FCC. And
it was a very successful event.
We also would like to thank the Commission for
its work to meet some of the recommendations that
we’ve made previously. We’d all like to come with
that wonderful fact sheet showing the features of
several -- as recommended in our June 27, 2008
meeting minutes. And also I would like Eric to speak
to this but we were very pleased by the closed
captioning statutory ruling and NPRM that was
released recently on November 7, 2008.
We addressed several recommendations and added
to digital TV captioning from June 2008 meeting.
Prior to the converters coming out several of us from
the Disability Working Group met on October 13 and
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again on October 27 with staff of Chairman Martin’s
office. And also for the first meeting with Cathy
Seidel, the head of CGB and staff of the DRO we asked
the two of us -- for the National Association of the
Deaf.
At these meetings we addressed issues such as
the need to clear up the occasion of new network
exceptions and to stop implementing exceptions. We
also talked about the needs for improvement in the
complaint process that will make it easier for
consumers who are deaf to address complaints and give
us a -- response.
Eric, would you like to speak to the issues that
you brought up?
Mr. Bridges: Sure. During the meeting that
Cheryl was speaking of, we talked about the
recommendation that was adopted during the June
meeting concerning access to televised emergency
information. And expressed our, not just ACB’s
belief but the blindness community’s belief and hope
that the FCC would move forward on adopted language.
Turns out a couple days later a public notice
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was created concerning this issue. Just as a bit of
timeline after the June meeting when the language,
the recommendation, was adopted. In early October
the American Council of the Blind utilized that
recommended language as part of the petition for
rulemaking on this issue of access to televised
emergency information.
The recommendation that is before you today
essentially states what I’ve just said. That this
was adopted in June, put into a petition for
rulemaking by the American Council of the Blind. And
the hope is that this letter of support will prompt
the FCC to continue to move this issue forward.
Madame Chair?
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you, Eric. Is this the
recommendation that is in the packet, correct?
Mr. Bridges: Yes.
Ms. Berlyn: If everyone can pull that out. You
can see the recommendation is in your packet that the
Disability Working Group is asking for support for.
So I take it Eric, you are moving forward this
recommendation?
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Mr. Bridges: Yes.
Ms. Berlyn: And do we have a second?
Female Speaker: Second.
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you. Discussion?
Hearing none, we will move to a vote. All those
in favor indicate by saying aye.
[A chorus of ayes.]
Ms. Berlyn: Opposed?
[No response.]
Ms. Berlyn: Abstentions? One, two, three,
three abstentions. So the recommendation is
approved. And I thank the Disability Group.
Yes, Cheryl?
Ms. Heppner: I would like for Karen to add a
few words about the recent action related to closed
captioning.
Ms. Berlyn: Karen?
Ms. Peltz Strauss: Just real quickly without
going into depth. The new order, one of the best
things about the new order is that clarifies, I think
Cheryl started to say this, that new networks that
have been analog networks and are now digital
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networks don’t qualify for the new network
exemptions. So they’re basically considered the same
as they were for the purposes of the captioning
rules.
They also have to pass through both digital and
analog caption especially because people who still
have analog TVs are going to be getting would only
necessarily be able to get those analog, sometimes
could only get those analog captions with some of the
set top boxes. And then one of the biggest changes
of the new complaint processes because right now in
order to file a complaint against a broadcaster or
any cable company or satellite company you have to
first file with the programming distributor and then
wait 45 after the end of the close of a quarter. To
make a long story short, it adds up to, I think,
about 180 days or something like that to get, maybe
even more to get an answer from the provider.
And what this now says is you can bring a
complaint directly to the FCC or to the distributor
and lays out a very specific process. The other
thing for doing this -- the other thing that it does
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is it gives, it tells the video programming industry
to designate contacts, specific contacts for the
filing of complaints. So that you now have to -- now
consumers will have an easier time finding out who to
file a complaint with.
And for immediate problems, like you’re watching
TV and the captions drop off and you have no idea of
where to go to now, this requires that all you have
to do is go to the distributor’s website or go to the
FCC’s website. And you will be able to find out who
to contact at the moment that it happens. So there
are some very significant changes.
And I want to thank this group because many of
these were suggested in our comments to the FCC. So
I think this is a success story for CAC.
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you, Karen. And thank you,
Cheryl and Eric, for all the work that you have done
in this area. It’s been great. So thank you very
much.
And we are towards the close of our day here. I
just wanted to say a couple of things very briefly.
I’d like to thank everybody for your participation.
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This has been -- this is the third Consumer
Advisory Committee that I have worked with, first one
serving as Chair. But I thought we were extremely
productive. And not only were we productive, but I
think we were able to recognize issues that were of
great importance to consumers and some of which were
adopted by the FCC.
So I think we should be very proud, not only of
the work that we did, but also the issues that we did
cover and the importance to consumers and their
relevance to the Commission. We had several of our
recommendations actually adopted. And I won’t go
through them all now. I was planning on doing a
little bit more, but in the interest of time, I will
just say that this is the first CAC that I have been
associated with that did have as much action that
actually was turned into action from the FCC.
So congratulations to everybody who
participated, both in the full CAC and in the working
groups. And it’s been great to work with you. And
oh, Scott can say something, sure.
Mr. Marshall: I’ll be very brief too. And it’s
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been great working with all of you too. And I echo
what Debbie has said so eloquently about this group.
These Consumer Advisory Committees have been
around since early 2001 and I’ve been privileged to
work with you all that time. And many of the faces
around this table have been there for this duration
as well. And I think we’ve got a lot to be proud of
as we’ve learned how to do this better, learn how to
interact with the Commission better.
Sure, there’s always things we want to do more
and better. And we’ll do that in the future too.
And I hope that the Chairman, and I know he will,
proceed to appoint members to a new committee that
was re-chartered recently that will run through 2010.
And that we can continue with the momentum that we’ve
established with this Committee.
Ms. Berlyn: Very good. Thanks. Karen?
Ms. Peltz Strauss: I just want to say thank you
so much to Debbie.
Ms. Berlyn: Aw, come on.
Ms. Peltz Strauss: Because this is not an easy
job. This is a large Committee and your organization
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structure, dedication, commitment, I really think is
telling in the fact that this Committee established
or accomplished so much. So thank you very much for
your time.
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you.
[Applause.]
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you. Appreciate that. And
we actually have something for everyone.
And I’m sorry that a few people sneaked out
before we could get a hold of them. But if you’ve
ever served before you know that one of the nice
little treats you get at the end of the day, at the
end of the CAC is a certificate of appreciation. And
so, we have those to give out here.
And I will quickly go through and see -- yeah, I
see they’re organized alphabetically by organization.
So I won’t individually thank each one of you for
that, but I will thank you as a group. And we will
distribute your certificates.
Gloria?
Eric?
These are suitable for framing. They’re very
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nice. Ok.
Charles has left. We’ll make sure he gets his.
Dodie I think just left as well. There’s a reward
for staying to the end.
Karen? Yours.
And wow, we’re missing a lot of people. I have
Bill Belt’s.
Jamie?
The Julie, Bill, Jamie appreciation. Thank you.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Berlyn: That’s Paul. And here’s Claude.
Thank you. Thank you for helping Betty. There’s
mine.
Brandon?
Lori has left. John Cole? Thank you,
especially John Cole, who comes all the way from
Hawaii every time. We’ve been trying to convince him
to let us go there instead.
Doug I have. Jack Sander? Do you want to take
his?
Commissioner Santini, we’ll get these in the
mail I think to everybody else.
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Brenda? Thank you very much.
Cheryl? Thank you.
Dan, got yours here.
Marty? I know, I know.
Rich? You know we’re getting to the end.
That’s Verizon.
Scott? There we go. Thank you very much. And
Lew Craig is not here. I think that’s it.
Oh, I’m sorry. Lew is there? Thank you. Lew,
all the way from Alaska, serious commitment.
Again, thank you all. Look at that, we’re
ending actually 15 minutes early after all that hard
work. We should ask for -- yes. There’s nobody
here.
Is there anyone who wants to make a public
comment?
[No response.]
Ms. Berlyn: Thank you. Do we need a motion to
adjourn? Do I have a motion to adjourn?
Ms. Tristani: I move to adjourn.
Ms. Berlyn: Oh thank you. I thought we were
going to stay here.
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[Laughter.]
Ms. Berlyn: A beautiful thought until February
--
[End of audio.]
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